Ukraine-Russia war – latest: Ambassador warns Putin not acting ‘seriously’ yet in Ukraine

Russia unleashed a major two-wave overnight air attack on Kyiv that killed at least one person, officials said, as the Ukrainian capital prepares to celebrate its birthday on Sunday.

Air defence systems downed at least 20 drones moving towards Kyiv, with falling debris killing a 41-year-old man and injuring a 35-year-old woman in the city, mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

The pre-dawn attacks came on the last Sunday of May when the capital celebrates Kyiv Day, the anniversary of its official founding 1,541 years ago. The day is typically marked by street fairs, live concerts and special museum exhibitions – plans for which have been made this year too, but on a smaller scale.

“The history of Ukraine is a long-standing irritant for the insecure Russians,” Andriy Yermak, the head of president Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said on his Telegram channel.

Several districts of Kyiv, by far the largest Ukrainian city with a population of around 3 million, suffered in the overnight attacks, officials said, including the historical Pecherskyi neighbourhood.

Reuters witnesses said that during the air raid alerts that started soon after midnight, many people stood on their balconies, some screaming offensives directed at Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and “Glory to air defence” slogans.

Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Sunday he was convinced that senior Kremlin officials had banned reporting about him on state media, cautioning that such a misleading approach would lead to a backlash from the Russian people within months.

Asked about what appeared to be a ban on coverage of him on state media, Prigozhin used a series of Russian proverbs to poke fun at those responsible: “What is forbidden is always sweeter.”

“Wagner is not a piece of slippery soap which the bureaucrats have got used to shoving all over the place; Wagner is an awl, a stiletto that you cannot hide,” Prigozhin said. “I am absolutely convinced they have forbidden (coverage).”

“That high-level bureaucrats, those very towers of the Kremlin, are trying to shut the mouths of everyone so that they don’t speak about Wagner will only give another shove to the people.”

Such an approach, he said, would provoke a backlash from the Russian people.

“In the long term – long term is two or three months – they will receive a finger-slap from the people for trying to shut everyone’s mouths and ears,” Prigozhin said.

The Kremlin and the defence ministry have ignored Prigozhin’s outbursts, which appear to break the rules of the tightly controlled political system crafted by Putin since he won the top job in the Kremlin on the last day of 1999.

The Kremlin, which did not respond to a request for comment, says all the aims of the “special military operation” in Ukraine will be achieved despite what it says is a proxy-war being waged by the West against it.

The Russian ambassador to the UK Andrei Kelin has claimed that Russia has not yet started acting “seriously” in Ukraine.

In an interview on the BBC’s Kuenssberg show, Kelin said Russia is “yet to act very seriously” in Ukraine, and warned Russia has “enormous resources” to fight.

Ambassador Kelin also warned of a “new dimension” in the Russia-Ukraine war. He said: “It is a big idealistic mistake to think that Ukraine will prevail. Russia is 16 times bigger than Ukraine. We have enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously.

“We are just defending the lands which are under control and assisting Russian people over there. We are rebuilding the Donbas.

“It depends on the escalation of war that is taking place. Sooner or later this escalation might have a new dimension that we do not need and we do not want. We can make peace tomorrow, if Ukrainian side will be prepared to negotiate but there is no preconditions for that.

“The German defence minister said if we stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, it will stop the day after tomorrow,” he said and laughs, saying he is right.

“If supplies of weapons will be stopped, it will be stopped the day after tomorrow. Please, stop it.”

Ambassador Kelin’s claims of “enormous resources” come after reports that Russian forces on the ground are poorly equipped and without proper training.

Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last week launched a scathing attack on Vladimir Putin’s war strategy. He said Russia could lose the war in Ukraine, warning he “hardly believes” Russia can hold on to the territory it has claimed to control.

Elsewhere in the interview, Kelin said he disagrees with Prigozhin’s claim that there is a chance of “losing Russia”.

A request has been made by Russian state-backed media and business groups to the Kremlin for a six-day work week for Russians to support the war effort, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

In an intelligence update posted on Twitter, the MoD said Russians are being mandated to “actively make sacrifices in support of the war effort.”

Russian state-backed media and business groups have petitioned the Economic Ministry to authorise a six-day week for workers “in the face of the economic demands of the war,” the MoD said.

The six-day work week will not include additional pay, according to the UK defence ministry.

The update pointed to leading Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan, who said citizens should work for two extra hours in munitions factories each day in addition to their regular jobs.

“The evolving tone of the conversations clearly echoes a Soviet-style sense of societal compulsion,” the MoD said.

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed several drones as they approached the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region near the Black Sea, local officials said on Sunday.

“Several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tried to approach the territory of the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar Krai,” the region’s emergency officials said on the Telegram messaging channel.

“All of them were neutralized, the infrastructure of the plant was not damaged.”

The officials did not say who launched the attack. Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.

On Saturday, Moscow said that Ukraine had struck oil pipeline installations deep inside Russia. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia and on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

The Ilsky refinery, near the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, has a processing capacity of around 6.6 million tonnes per year. It has been attacked several times this month.

Russia unleashed multiple waves of air strikes on Kyiv overnight in what officials said appeared to be the largest drone attack on the city since the start of the war, as the Ukrainian capital prepared to celebrate the anniversary of its founding on Sunday.

In what also appeared to be the first deadly attack on Kyiv in May and the 14th assault since the start of the month, officials said air defence systems downed at least 40 drones moving towards Kyiv with falling debris killing one person.

The pre-dawn attacks came on the last Sunday of May when the capital celebrates Kyiv Day, the anniversary of its official founding 1,541 years ago. The day is typically marked by street fairs, live concerts and special museum exhibitions – plans for which have been made this year too, but on a smaller scale.

“The history of Ukraine is a long-standing irritant for the insecure Russians,” Andriy Yermak, the head of president Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said on his Telegram channel.

Preliminary information indicated the air raid was the largest drone attack on Kyiv since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration said. Russia used the Iranian-made Shahed drones in the attack, he added.

Reuters was not able to independently verify that information.

“Today, the enemy decided to ‘congratulate’ the people of Kyiv on Kyiv Day with the help of their deadly UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles),” Popko said on the Telegram messaging app.

“The attack was carried out in several waves, and the air alert lasted more than five hours.”

President Vladimir Putin on Sunday ordered stronger border security to ensure “fast” Russian military and civilian movement into Ukrainian regions now under Moscow control.

Speaking in a congratulatory message to the border service, a branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), on their Border Guard Day holiday, Mr Putin said their task was to “reliably cover” the lines in the vicinity of the combat zone.

Attacks inside Russia have been growing in intensity in recent weeks, chiefly with drone strikes on regions along the border but increasingly deep into the country as well, including on an oil pipeline northwest of Moscow on Saturday.

“It is necessary to ensure the fast movement of both military and civilian vehicles and cargo, including food, humanitarian aid building materials sent to the new subjects of the (Russian) Federation,” Mr Putin said in a message posted on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel.

Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk are the four regions in Ukraine that Mr Putin proclaimed annexed last September following what Kyiv said were sham referendums. Russian forces only partly control the four regions.

On Saturday, officials said three people were injured in Ukrainian shelling in Belgorod, a region that was the target of pro-Ukrainian fighters this week that sparked doubts about Russia’s defence and military capabilities.

More than 40 drones launched by Russia overnight were downed in Kyiv’s airspace, the capital’s military administration officials said on Sunday on its Telegram messaging channel.