Yuliia Taradiuk

Ukraine could effectively isolate occupied Crimea as drone strikes increasingly disrupt Russian logistics routes, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.

Ukraine's General Staff denied Russian claims that a Ukrainian drone struck a bus carrying a Belarusian children's football team in Bryansk Oblast, saying no Ukrainian drones were deployed in the region at the time.

Russian forces launched 132 long-range attack drones, including Shahed-type drones, and two Iskander-M ballistic missiles against Ukraine overnight, Ukraine's Air Force reported.

Oleksandr Syrskyi said Ukraine would continue expanding the capabilities of units already deployed in the northern sector, but did not clarify whether the measures were intended to counter threats from Russia, Belarus, or both.

"Russia must be forced to end its war against our people. And Ukraine's long-range weapons are one of the important components of such pressure," President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

When a Ukrainian strike hit Russian-occupied Starobilsk on May 22, Moscow seized on the attack almost instantly, with Russian officials claiming that 21 students of a local vocational college were killed and dozens more injured and portraying the strike as a deliberate attack on civilians — which Ukraine denied. The incident soon became a centerpiece of Russian state messaging, used to accuse Ukraine of terrorism, rally public outrage, and justify subsequent strikes on Kyiv on May 24 and June 2

Ukraine currently maintains a 1.5-to-1 advantage over Russian forces in the use of FPV drones, with the gap continuing to widen in recent months, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said.

"We do not control what the allocation of those missiles is going to be. We can't tell anybody where you're going to be on that (priority list)," Brian Dunn, Lockheed Martin's vice-president for strategy and business development for missiles and fire control, said.

Russian forces launched two Iskander ballistic missiles and 221 drones, 195 of which were intercepted, overnight on June 11, according to the Air Force.

Ukraine struck military targets in Russian-occupied Crimea, hitting several bridges as multiple explosions were reported across the peninsula overnight on June 11, according to local authorities and monitoring channels.

This weekly update from the Kyiv Independent aims to shed light on the situation facing Ukrainians living under Russian occupation and the ever-tightening control of information imposed by the Kremlin. Key news as of June 8: * Crimea faces food shortages amid Ukraine's intensified drone attacks * Bridge linking Crimea to southern Ukraine damaged in drone strike, Ukrainian military confirms * Ukraine's drones take aerial control over part of land route to Russian-occupied Crimea, military sa

Ukraine's military reportedly launched another onslaught of middle strikes on Russian and Russian-occupied regions overnight on June 8, striking multiple oil depots and electrical substations, Russian Telegram media channels reported.

"The business elite in St. Petersburg can now see firsthand how the Russian Defense Ministry is eroding their share of the so-called 'social contract,'" a Russian military blogger known by the nickname Reporter Filatov said.

Sumy Oblast Governor Oleh Hryhorov said that "a targeted strike" by a Russian drone on a residential building in the Mykolaivska community took the life of a 64-year-old man and injured his 84-year-old mother.

Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces released footage of drones striking a Russian warship armed with guided missiles at the Kronstadt naval base near St. Petersburg.