"I am waiting to see who will come from Russia, and then I will decide which steps Ukraine should take. So far, the signals from them in the media are unconvincing," President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The air raid was announced at around 2:30 p.m. local time, while the explosion sounded around 2:50 p.m. The number of victims killed rose to three, Sumy Oblast Governor Oleh Hryhorov reported at 8:42 p.m.
If confirmed, the decision would mark the first time since Russia's full-scale invasion that President Volodymyr Zelensky is absent, either physically or virtually, from a NATO summit.
The disclosure follows a warning from Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, who on May 6 said Moscow was carrying out an "unprecedented" interference campaign.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had appealed to his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, to ask Putin if he was willing to conclude a peace agreement.
Earlier reporting from the Washington Post cited a former Russian official who claimed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, would represent Moscow in the talks.
The Council of Europe on May 14 approved the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russia's top leadership for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, Ukrainian lawmaker Maria Mezentseva reported.
Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in August 2023 while reporting from Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories. Moscow admitted she was in Russian detention the following year.
Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel speaks about the future of the EU-led special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine and its role in bringing Russia to justice.
President Volodymyr Zelensky convened an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defense Council after Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka dam on June 6, 2023. (Photo: President's Office)
At least 150 tons of machine oil have been released into the Dnipro River after Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka dam on June 6, the President's Office reported.
According to the President's Office, there is a risk of 300 additional tons of machine oil leaking into the river.
President Volodymyr Zelensky convened an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine after Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant’s dam on the morning of June 6, sparking a large-scale humanitarian and environmental disaster across southern Ukraine.
The attack occurred around 2:50 a.m. local time, the President's office wrote.
No civilian or military casualties were reported as a result of the explosion, but 80 settlements are in the immediate flood zone.
The Interior Ministry reported that as of 11:00 a.m. local time, 885 civilians have been evacuated from Kherson Oblast. However, some of the settlements which face the biggest risk of flooding are under Russian occupation.
Kherson Oblast Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said that civilians evacuated from the critical risk zones are being transported by bus and train to Mykolaiv, Khmelnytsky, Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, Kyiv, and other cities.
The members of the National Security and Defense Council agreed on a set of international measures following the attack, including convening a meeting of the UN Security Council and appealing to organizations such as the International Criminal Court.
Several world leaders have already publicly condemned Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam, with many of them calling it a war crime.
Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent. The U.S. publisher Deep Vellum published her co-translation of Ukrainian author Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker in 2024. Some of her other writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine.
Olena Goncharova
