At dawn on Thursday, June 18, Ukraine launched a massive wave of drone attacks targeting the Russian depth and the energy sector in the capital, Moscow.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that air defenses intercepted 180 drones, while a number of them managed to hit a major oil refinery in the capital for the second time this week, resulting in a massive explosion and a huge fire, at a time when the debris of the drones caused a fire inside a shopping mall in the southeast of the city and damaged an apartment building in Zhukovsky.
Russian missile response
In turn, Russian forces in the early hours of this morning fired several ballistic missiles at targets inside Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv and the Poltava region in the center of the country, prompting residents to flee to shelters as soon as the explosions were heard.
According to Ukrainian sources, Russian strikes hit an energy infrastructure facility and an industrial facility in Poltava, and the shelling came a few days after an intense Russian attack that killed 11 people and damaged an archaeological cathedral inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in Kyiv.
Ukrainian drone hits Belarusian bus
Local authorities in Russia's Bryansk border region reported that a Ukrainian marcher hit a bus carrying a children's soccer team from Belarus on their way to a holiday on the Black Sea coast, killing a woman escort and injuring seven people, including five children.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry described the incident as a "new act of terrorism" and demanded explanations for Kyiv, while the Ukrainian military denied launching any drones towards the region, calling the statements false.
This sharp escalation on the ground and diplomacy comes more than four years after the outbreak of Russia's full-scale military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022, which turned into the worst conflict on the European continent since World War II.
While troop advances on the ground have slowed this year, Kyiv has intensified its strategy of striking Russian oil facilities and refineries (such as Kuibyshev, Vladimir, and Moscow) as "long-term sanctions" to weaken Moscow's economic capabilities, international sources said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, refuses to hold direct talks with Zelensky, insisting on taking control of the Donbas region by force, relying on redirecting his country's economic compass toward Asian markets affected by regional energy crises.
East Summit in Kazan
Russian President Vladimir Putin will host a summit of leaders of Southeast Asian countries (ASEAN) in the central Russian city of Kazan starting Wednesday, as Western pressure on Moscow to end its offensive on Ukraine.
The summit in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, about 700 kilometers east of Moscow, coincides with the G7 meeting in France, where the meeting is mainly focused on ending the war in Ukraine and the wars in the Middle East.
The Kremlin announced that this summit commemorates the 35th anniversary of cooperation between Russia and ASEAN countries, whose representatives are scheduled to arrive in Kazan today, with the main day of the summit to be held on Thursday.
Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Malaysia and Singapore are sending their prime ministers, while President Ferdinand Marcos is represented by the Philippines. Myanmar, which witnessed a coup in 2021 and has close ties to Moscow, will also send a delegation.
"The leaders will exchange views on global and regional problems, and the new goals of Russian-Asian relations in the fields of security, trade, investment and humanitarian cooperation," Moscow said.
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