Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha publicly condemned countries that sent congratulatory messages to Russia on its national holiday, specifically targeting recent greetings from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Speaking before a “Weimar+” format ministerial meeting in Rome, Sybiha expressed his displeasure at what he described as inappropriate diplomatic gestures toward an aggressor nation.

“As a minister of a country at war, it was particularly unpleasant for me to read public congratulations from some countries addressed to the Russian aggressor on their national holiday this morning. There can be no reward for aggression. There can be no reward for an aggressor country,” Sybiha said, according to reports from Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sybiha argued that his position stems from direct exposure to the war’s realities. The minister referenced a recent visit to Kherson with his Lithuanian counterpart, noting the city’s proximity to active fighting at just 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the front line.

This short distance to active hostilities makes Kherson vulnerable to heavy and continuous shelling and drone attacks by Russian forces. Sybiha described observing children attending classes in underground schools as evidence of what he termed “Russian terror.”

The minister’s comments came in response to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Russia Day message, in which Rubio stated that the United States remains committed to supporting the Russian people who “continue to build their aspiration for a better future.”

Rubio also emphasized a desire for “constructive engagement with the Russian Federation to bring about a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine. It is our hope that peace will foster more mutually beneficial relations between our countries.”

His greeting came as the Russian troop losses in Ukraine have surpassed one million and the recent polls indicated that approximately 75% of Russians still support the ongoing invasion. 

Sybiha also claimed that Russia presented what he called “old and unrealistic ultimatums” during peace talks in Istanbul. Russia demands Ukraine withdraws from four occupied regions, adopts a neutral status, abandon aspirations to join NATO, and recognize Russian as an official languag.

Meanwhile, Ukraine rejects any veto over its NATO aspirations and insists on strong Western security guarantees. The country also accepted a US ceasefire proposal 100 days ago, which Russia continues to reject. Russian President Vladimir Putin also avoided meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Istanbul even though this was proposed to him. 

The foreign minister stated Ukraine’s goal of ending the war within the current year, emphasizing the importance of maintaining pressure on Russia to achieve a ceasefire that could lead to broader negotiations.

War intensifies amid Russia’s summer offensive. Ukraine has spotted a massive redeployment of Russian self-propelled artillery and air defense systems to Sumy Oblast. 

Ukrainian forces have recorded a large-scale transfer of Russian military equipment from Crimea and Kherson towards Sumy Oblast. According to Petro Andriushchenko, head of the Occupation Studies Center, this is the largest movement of weaponry in the past six months.

“More than 10 self-propelled artillery systems, air defense systems, and convoys of over 40 trucks carrying ammunition and personnel,” Andriushchenko says.

The equipment is being loaded onto trains and sent to Russia’s Kursk Oblast, effectively heading to Sumy. The Russians are now stationed approximately 25-30 km from it. If they reach the city’s border, they will use artillery to strike it. 

Special attention is drawn to the military equipment markings, which, with their dominant tactical symbol of a triangle within a triangle, indicate reinforcement of this specific direction.

Amid this buildup, Sumy faces heavy drone attacks. Konotop mayor Artem Semenikhin stated that on 8 June, the region endured the most powerful drone assault since the war began: “The entire sky over the region turned red with targets.”

Russian forces launched an overnight air assault on 5 June using over 100 drones and a ballistic missile against Ukraine, and continued ground and artillery attacks. Russian strikes killed at least eight civilians, including a baby, and injured dozens across Ukraine, according to local authorities.

Mass aerial attack

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russia used 103 Shahed-type drones and one Iskander-M ballistic missile in its latest assault from Russian territory and Crimea’s occupied zone. The main directions of attack included Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa oblasts. Air defenses neutralized 74 drones—28 shot down and 46 jammed or lost. Impacts from the airstrikes were confirmed in 16 locations across Ukraine.

The Air Force’s data suggest that the missile and at least 29 Russian drones may have reached their targets.

Civilians killed in Pryluky

In Pryluky, Chernihiv Oblast, Russia struck with at least six Shahed drones, for some reason referred to by their Russian designation as “Geran” by Regional Military Administration head Vyacheslav Chaus.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that the fatal strike destroyed the home of a rescuer, killing his wife, daughter, and grandson.

“This is already the 632nd child killed during the full-scale war,” Zelenskyy said.

Large fires broke out in residential areas. The State Emergency Service reported two detached houses, two garages, one outbuilding, and a car were destroyed.

Kharkiv: targeted residential buildings

Kharkiv’s Slobidskyi district was hit by seven Russian drones, with a total of 16 explosive drones targeting Kharkiv Oblast. Additionally, the region was targeted by an Iskander-M Russian missile, two Kh-35, and one more unidentified missile. Mayor Ihor Terekhov and Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov reported 19 injured, including a pregnant woman, a 93-year-old, and four children, aged 7, 9,  and 13. Additionally, a 38-year-old man was injured in Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, after an explosion of an unidentified device.

Terekhov stated:

“This is not a strike on military targets. This is deliberate terror against residential areas and ordinary Kharkiv residents.”

Seven apartment buildings were damaged, with drones hitting 17th and 2nd floors directly. Fires erupted in apartments and vehicles.

Odesa Oblast: schools and clinics damaged

Russia struck Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi district in Odesa Oblast with drones, damaging a family medicine clinic, a children’s creativity center, and a lyceum school. Local authorities reported no casualties. Fires were extinguished by emergency services. Oblast head Oleh Kiper said law enforcement is documenting Russia’s actions as war crimes.

Sumy Oblast: children among injured

Sumy Oblast authorities confirmed injuries to two civilians over the past 24 hours: a 42-year-old man and a 13-year-old girl. Nearly 100 Russian strikes hit 35 towns and villages, including the use of more than 20 guided bombs and 30 VOG grenades dropped from drones.

Kherson: airstrikes kill two

Kherson Oblast authorities reported two killed and 10 injured over the past 24 hours. This morning, Russian forces bombed central Kherson with four KAB bombs, causing additional injuries to a 74-year-old, 68-year-old, and a 44-year-old man.

One apartment block’s entrance was destroyed, and nearby buildings damaged. The strike targeted the Kherson Oblast Administration building.

Four people trapped in a basement were rescued unharmed.

Earlier, a 66-year-old man suffered a blast injury in Bilozerka and will receive outpatient treatment.

Civilian casualties in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk oblasts

In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, two were injured during 428 Russian strikes across 14 settlements, including Vasylivskyi district, local authorities reported.

In Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a 71-year-old man was severely wounded by a Russian drone-dropped munition.

The Donetsk Oblast Military Administration reported an additional fatality and five more injuries from Russian attacks on 4 June.

“Terrorism”

President Zelenskyy condemned the Russian strikes as acts of terrorism:

“This is another massive attack by Russian terrorists who kill our people every night. We expect action from the US, Europe, and everyone who can help stop this.”

He called for further sanctions and international pressure, stating that peace can only come through force and determination.

Related:

• Putin “gives the finger” to the entire world, Zelenskyy says after Trump’s call with Russian president
• 95 Russian drones target Ukraine overnight: Kharkiv hit for 90 minutes straight
• ISW: Russia continues to want Ukraine’s “complete destruction.” Russian missile stockpile only grows.
• Russia kills civilians in central Sumy with Tornado-S cluster munitions. “Hypersonic” Kinzhal hits near Mykolaiv (updated)

Ukraine’s Security Service detained four Kherson residents who collaborated with Russian forces during the occupation of the right-bank part of Kherson Oblast, the SBU reported on 30 May.

Russian forces occupied the city of Kherson on 1 March 2022, shortly after invading the Kherson Oblast from Crimea on 24 February 2022. Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson on 11 November 2022, ending a 255-day occupation.

Among those arrested is a chief specialist from one of the Kherson city council departments. The woman worked as a private accountant before voluntarily joining Russia’s local occupation administration, where she headed a unit called the “labor and social protection management,” according to the SBU.

Law enforcement established that the woman transferred personal data of local residents to occupation “election commissions” for conducting Russia’s fake referendum. After Kherson’s liberation, on 11 November 2022, the woman “went underground” and later returned to work at the city council, hiding her collaboration with Russia, the SBU said.

Two other suspects are local residents who joined the administration of occupation prisons after the regional center was captured. One became an “assistant on duty” to the head of the so-called “investigative detention center.” His duties included guarding prison cells where Russians brought resistance movement participants from the region, investigators found.

The second man voluntarily agreed to guard the perimeter of an occupation prison that Russians opened on the basis of a captured correctional colony, the investigation said.

The fourth detainee is a Kherson resident who joined the occupation Russian Interior Ministry at the start of the full-scale war. She became an “inspector of the analysis, planning and accounting group of the Korabelny department.” She guided armed Russian units to the homes of Ukrainian patriots, law enforcement noted.

All suspects received charges of collaboration and are held in custody without bail. They face up to 15 years in prison with property confiscation.

On 29 May, a taxi driver was detained in Dnipro for correcting Russian strikes on the city. On 30 May, the SBU detained a Russian agent from Khmelnytskyi Oblast who guided missiles to military airfields.

Zarina Zabrisky, Euromaidan Press war correspondent, reflects on daily life under drone fire in Kherson, as the United Nations confirms these attacks were deliberate crimes against humanity.

Russian armed forces have committed murder of civilians as crimes against humanity using drones, concludes the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine in a new report just out on 28 May 2025.

This confirms what the people of Kherson knew for months: Russia is targeting civilians from across the river with drones. They are not aiming at military sites. They are hunting people.

Russia’s “human safari” reaches all-time high

By May 2025, the Russian military’s “human safari” is at an all-time high in Kherson, the regional center in the south of Ukraine. Khersonians, keen on defining the horrors befalling them, gave this macabre name to a relatively new Russian tactic: commercially made, small drones hunt and kill civilians.

Mass drone attacks started in Kherson in winter-spring 2024, and intensified by the end of July.

Taking videos and photographs of drone attacks used to be virtually impossible, as such footage might cost a reporter their life or limb. By spring 2025, however, not only is “human safari” a term recognized worldwide, but the attacks are so frequent that the evidence is overwhelming.

These days, aim a camera at the sky—and sooner or later, a drone will show up.

100 drones a day attack Kherson civilians

For comparison, mines and explosives wounded 215 and killed 22 during the same period in the Kherson Oblast.

Explore further

Russian drones hunt civilians, terrorize Kherson with “human safari”

UN confirms deliberate war crimes

The UN has now concluded that attacks like this were part of a policy designed to spread terror and confirmed that the practice is recognized as a war crime by international law, as the Russian pilots on the other side of the Dnipro River can see the target and intentionally kill civilians.

“The attacks followed a regular pattern and the same modus operandi, demonstrating that they were planned, directed, and organized. There is no information suggesting that Russian military and civilian authorities have taken any steps to prevent or stop the commission of the crimes,” the researchers conclude.

After months of targeting coastal areas, attacks now focus on the city center and residential areas considered the safest.

Russians master the deadly “double tap”

On May 3, an FPV drone hit a parking lot by the city’s main shopping center, killing one civilian and injuring three. On May 4, more drones attacked downtown, setting civilian vehicles on fire. Meanwhile, artillery and drone assaults on coastal neighborhoods also intensified, said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, spokesperson for the Kherson Military Administration, in an interview.

“Each week, the Russian military launches guided aerial bomb strikes, followed by artillery shelling—the so-called ‘double tap,'” he said. “Civilian casualties are mounting.”

Due to “double-tap,” a move that Russians have mastered in Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine, the ambulances cannot pick up the dead.

In April, a drone hit the hospital ER, damaging a hearse with the body of another Russian drone victim, injuring two funeral agency workers.

March 27: when “Armageddon” became daily reality

27 March 2025, is known as “Armageddon”: as the White House proclaimed “energy infrastructure ceasefire,” an unprecedented combined attack hit Kherson, with 37 artillery strikes and dozens of drones killing two and wounding six civilians, and killing several dogs at an animal shelter, in three hours.

More on that dreadful day

“First they shell, then they hunt”: Russia’s savage new civilian terror strategy debuts in Kherson

Later, Armageddon became a daily reality.

First, drones arrive to patrol the skies. Then, a major attack starts either with artillery, shaking the city with a non-stop series of outgoing booms, followed by thin, long whistles, turning into crashing sounds of explosions, or with the aerial guided bomb pulverizing buildings and blocks.

Every five minutes, explosions rock the streets. Shells often hit the power infrastructure, and the electricity goes off.

Life in a city under siege

The city plunges into chaos. Streets and squares remind battle scenes, with cars in flames, power lines torn from the poles blowing in the wind, plumes of black smoke rushing over the sky.

The stench of burned rubber tickles the throat. Drones buzz low and hit public buses and taxis. At the parking lots and sidewalks, drones circle over the injured and dead, crouched in pools of blood.

It is not unusual to discover body parts at the scene. Hiding from the drones becomes easier in summer, with trees providing shelter.

At night, Kherson listens to the louder buzzing sounds of Shahed drones, as well as tanks, mortars, machine guns, and Kalashnikovs fire. Russians are only a few miles away and they try—and fail—to cross the Dnipro River in the dark.

Residents move to the hallways to shelter, but the attacks are so frequent that most only do it if the walls shake and the remaining glass jiggles. Not much glass is left in the windows as it fell out from shock waves and shrapnel pieces. Most windows are covered with plywood.

Walking or driving to a bomb shelter is virtually impossible, as after 9 pm curfew prohibits being outside.

Khersonians stop being outside much earlier. The city is eerily empty, with broken billboards creaking and banging against the walls. Packs of wild dogs roam the streets and are dangerous as they lick blood from the asphalt after the bodies are removed. They attack pedestrians and bicyclists.

In the morning, Armageddon starts all over as FPV drones are flying by the windows, whizzing by, and dropping grenades on any cars driving by.

Russia’s deadly “creativity”

Russian drones now drop anti-personnel landmines on civilians in Kherson

Even gardeners need bulletproof vests

Kherson City Park crews trimming roses and mowing lawns in the Freedom Square, wearing bulletproof vests, came under attack on the last week of April.

Olga Chupikova, the head of the crew, whose son was recently killed in combat, survived the attack as she was inside.

She said, “It was scary. Three cars burned down. Four colleagues were injured.”

While in April people were still outside planting tomatoes and pumpkins on top of temporary shelters and watering flowerbeds by the ruins, by May, the Kherson military administration recommended staying inside due to the increase in drone attacks.

The challenge of reporting from the frontline

Reporting from Kherson is challenging. A special access is needed, and journalists’ protective gear becomes a bait for the Russian drone pilots.

Working without a bulletproof vest and helmet is a serious risk. In colder weather, a hoodie jacket helps, but as temperatures rise, it becomes difficult. Nevertheless, the coverage of this new reality—and the future of modern warfare—is critically important.

Hi, I’m Zarina, a frontline reporter for Euromaidan Press and the author of this piece. We aim to shed light on some of the world’s most important yet underreported stories. Help us make more articles like this by becoming a Euromaidan Press patron.