The number of fatalities from Russia’s 17 June massive attack on Kyiv has climbed to 26 people, with rescue teams continuing to recover bodies from the debris of a destroyed residential building.

Search and rescue operations have been ongoing since the early morning hours on 18 June at a nine-story apartment complex in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district struck by a Russian ballistic missile, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.

Rescue crews worked through the night to extract victims from the rubble. The casualty count increased throughout the day as emergency workers made additional recoveries, with the latest update on death toll being 19 people killed in one single building. Five more civilians died on other sites affected by the Russian attack.

[update] As of 1 p.m. on 18 June, the State Emergency Service reported that the number of killed people retrieved from the destroyed building in Solomianskyi district has risen to 21, moving the total death toll up to 26 people.

Among the victims was a 31-year-old man whose parents had waited all day at the strike site hoping for his rescue. He did not survive.

Dmytro Isaenko was a first-year master’s student at Drahomanov University’s Faculty of Physical Education, Sports and Health, who was studying physical culture and sport with a focus on human health and physical recreation.

“This is the young man whose fate the whole country was following. The one whose parents stood by the ruins of the destroyed house and waited for their son, prayed and did not leave,” the university wrote on its Facebook page. “We all prayed with them. Their photos flew around the world, became a symbol of pain and hope. But no miracle happened.”

According to his social media posts, he enjoyed hiking in the mountains and had tried his hand at stand-up comedy.

The missile strike caused extensive damage to the residential structure, with the projectile penetrating deep enough to break through concrete floors into the basement level. The building housed multiple families across its nine floors.

Beyond the fatalities, the State Emergency Service documented 134 people injured across the capital. Rescue operations remain active in Kyiv as teams continue searching for potential survivors and victims in the damaged structures.

In response to the devastation, Kyiv authorities declared a day of mourning on 18 June, with flags lowered, entertainment events canceled, and the city honoring the victims.

US Embassy in Kyiv announced its participation in the city’s day of mourning for the 26 people killed in Kyiv, including one American citizen. The Embassy also characterized the 17 June Russian strike as contradicting President Trump’s calls to end the war and stop the killing.

The attack on Kyiv was part of a broader Russian assault on Ukraine that also targeted Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad, and Mykolaiv oblasts. On the night of 16-17 June, Russian forces launched a total of 440 drones and 32 missiles, including cruise and ballistic types.

In Odesa, the assault killed a 60-year-old woman and injured 17 people, including a pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl, while also damaging civilian infrastructure including residential buildings, a preschool facility, and garages.

Emergency services in Kyiv have recovered fragments of cluster munitions following the overnight Russian missile and drone attack on June 17, Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported, calling it further evidence of Russia's "genocide" against Ukrainians.

"In the capital's Nyvky neighborhood, emergency workers are now finding these kinds of cluster munition parts," Klitschko said in a statement shared on social media. "Another clear sign of the genocide Russia is committing against Ukrainians."

Cluster munitions are banned under international law by more than 100 countries due to their indiscriminate nature and the long-term threat they pose to civilians, especially when unexploded submunitions remain hidden in residential areas.

While Russia and Ukraine are not signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, international humanitarian organizations have repeatedly condemned the use of such weapons in populated areas. Ukraine uses cluster munitions on the battlefield against Russian forces.

The mayor's comments came hours after one of the largest and deadliest attacks on the Ukrainian capital in months, in which at least 15 people were killed and nearly 100 injured. The Russian strike, which lasted nearly nine hours, included waves of kamikaze drones, ballistic missiles, and what authorities now confirm were banned explosive parts.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called the assault "one of the most horrifying attacks on Kyiv," saying more than 440 drones and 32 missiles were launched across Ukraine overnight.

"Such attacks are pure terrorism," he said in a statement on social media. "And the whole world, the U.S., and Europe must finally respond as civilized societies respond to terrorists."

Zelensky confirmed that damage had been reported in eight districts of Kyiv, with emergency workers still searching for survivors beneath the rubble of a destroyed apartment block.

He added that strikes also hit Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv regions. "Fifteen people are confirmed dead. My condolences to their families and loved ones," Zelensky said.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also condemned the attack, calling it a "massive and brutal strike" timed deliberately to coincide with the G7 summit, which is taking place in Canada on June 16-17.

Russian drone strike on Odesa injures 13, including 1 child

Russian drone strikes on Odesa early June 17 injured 13 people, including one child, regional authorities reported.

The Kyiv IndependentLucy Pakhnyuk

Ukrainian medical specialists have started procedures to remove a “Glory to Russia” inscription from the body of a serviceman who recently returned from Russian captivity, according to reports from medical professionals involved in the case.

The treatment is being conducted under the “Unburnt” national program, which provides free external rehabilitation and treatment for deformational, post-military injuries, burns and scars for people affected by the war. Maksym Turkevych, director of the program, confirmed the medical intervention alongside dermatologist Oleksandr Turkevych.

According to Oleksandr Turkevych, the Ukrainian serviceman was captured more than 15 months ago following combat injuries. The medical professional explained that when the soldier regained consciousness after surgery while in captivity, he discovered the inscription had been left by the operating surgeon.

The removal process began with an injection of polynucleotide, a substance commonly used in cosmetic and medical procedures to stimulate cellular and tissue regeneration. The treatment represents the initial phase of what doctors expect to be a multi-stage process.

Maksym Turkevych indicated that medical teams are preparing the scarred tissue for more intensive interventions. He projected that within several months, only minimal traces of the inscription would remain visible.

The case came to public attention when Clash Report initially published photographs of the released Ukrainian fighter. The images showed the “Glory to Russia” text visible on the man’s body alongside battle scars, with reports indicating the marking was made by occupying forces during his captivity.

Andrii Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, verified the authenticity of the photographs. Yusov explained that a Ukrainian medical professional took the images during a routine examination of the freed defender.

Ukraine has received 108 Krab self-propelled howitzers from Poland. In three years of hard fighting since the first of the 53-ton, five-person guns arrived in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces have lost no fewer than 35 of the howitzers, which fire Ukraine’s best 155-millimeter shells as far as 31 km.

On or just before 7 June, a Russian drone crew showed what happens when artillery gunners don’t take every precaution. The Russian crew flew two fiber-optic first-person-view drones through gaps in the front and back of one Krab’s covered, concealed dugout in a tree line somewhere along the 1,100-km front line—and lit the gun on fire, destroying it.

It’s probably the 36th Krab loss. And it was totally preventable. 

Tiny FPV drones weighing a few pounds and clutching small warheads have, for two years now, hounded troops and vehicles on both sides of Russia’s 40-month wider war on Ukraine. For most of those two years, however, the drones’ prey were fairly safe inside or under loose concealment. 

After all, almost all FPVs were, until recently, controlled via wireless radio—and radio signals can’t always penetrate wood, brick and metal. At the very least, structures limit how far a drone can fly. “Obstacles between your transmitter and receiver can significantly reduce range,” FPV expert Oscar Liang explained.

The proliferation of fiber-optic drones has changed everything. Controlled via signals that travel up and down miles-long, millimeters-thick optical fiber, these FPVs are largely unbothered by buildings and dugouts—as long as their operators can avoid snagging the fibers and find some way into the covered position: an open door or window, a gap between layers of camouflage netting.

Which explains the new genre of drone video from the front line of the wider war: indoor drone strikes. FPVs are slipping through open doors and past dangling tarps and nets to strike soldiers and vehicles hiding inside what were once safe havens from FPV raids.

Knock knock

A dramatic video of one indoor strike, carried out by the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces’ Birds of Magyar unit in April, is typical of the new genre. Easing inside a warehouse, maneuvering past one parked Russian vehicle to take aim at a BMP fighting vehicle with its back hatch ajar, the drone struck inside the BMP.

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The explosion ignited a blaze that may have spread throughout the warehouse, if footage from an overhead surveillance drone is any indication. It’s possible one drone costing less than $1,000 destroyed several vehicles.

“Magyar birds are looking for worm equipment in the corners where the enemy definitely doesn’t expect the FPV drone,” someone—presumably Robert Brovdi, then Magyar’s leader and now the head of the USF—narrated over footage of the strike.

The Ukrainian Krab crew clearly also didn’t expect Russian FPVs to come snooping, which may explain why they accidentally left entrances for the maneuverable drones.

The Krab’s bulk—typical of all self-propelled guns, or SPGs—makes it hard to cover and conceal with 100% certainty. According to analyst Andrew Perpetua, it may actually be easier to dig an effective hideout for a towed gun. 

And it’s not like SPGs are actually rolling around the battlefield the way they may have done in previous wars. Tiny drones have made it virtual suicide for an artillery crews to “shoot and scoot.” So they don’t need tracks. They don’t need to be self-propelled.

“Instead of investing gajillions of dollars developing crappy SPGs that barely carry any ammo and often weigh obscene amounts of tons but can ‘shoot and scoot,’ countries should be investing in ultra lightweight, long-range towed guns that specialize in push and bush,” Perpetua wrote.

That is, push into position, hide in the bushes—and stay there. The gunners just need to work much harder to completely cover their guns when they’re not actually shooting at the enemy.

Explore further

Surprisingly, Russian soldiers used scissors to down a Ukrainian fiber-optic drone — but Kyiv also knows a trick or two

The Ukraine Conflict Observatory, a Yale University-led initiative that has documented Russian war crimes including the deportation of Ukrainian children, is preparing to close within weeks after the Trump administration terminated its funding.

Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, told CNN the program is “running on fumes” with approximately two weeks of funding remaining from individual donations.

“As of July 1, we lay off all of our staff across Ukraine and other teams and our work tracking the kids officially ends. We are waiting for our Dunkirk moment, for someone to come rescue us so that we can go attempt to help rescue the kids,” Raymond said.

The observatory was launched in May 2022 with State Department backing to “capture, analyze, and make widely available evidence of Russia-perpetrated war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine,” according to sources familiar with the program.

Over three years, it has compiled a database containing information on more than 30,000 Ukrainian children allegedly abducted by Russia across 100 locations.

The initiative’s work contributed to six International Criminal Court indictments against Russia, including two cases related to child abductions, Raymond stated. The program’s closure will create what sources describe as a significant intelligence gap, as no other organization has tracked Ukrainian child abductions with comparable scope and detail.

Funding was initially cut as part of Department of Government Efficiency reductions, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio temporarily reinstated support to facilitate data transfer to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. The transfer of evidence documenting alleged war crimes – including attacks on energy infrastructure, filtration sites, and civilian targets – is expected to occur within days.

Meanwhile, congressional representatives have mounted efforts to restore permanent funding through bipartisan letters to Rubio. A group led by Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett wrote that “research must continue unabated to maintain the rigorous process of identifying every Ukrainian child abducted by Russia.” The lawmakers stated the observatory “has verified that at least 19,500 children have been forcibly deported from occupied areas of Ukraine, funneled into reeducation camps or adopted by Russian families, and their identities erased.”

The congressional letter emphasized that “the Conflict Observatory’s work cannot be replaced by Europol or other organizations, none of whom have access to specific resources that have made the Observatory’s work so successful.”

A separate congressional correspondence from Democratic Representative Greg Landsman and colleagues questioned whether $8 million in previously allocated funding could still be disbursed to the program. The letter warned that “withholding these funds could appear to be a betrayal of the thousands of innocent children from Ukraine.”

The lawmakers noted that the actual number of affected children likely exceeds documented cases, citing a Russian official’s July 2023 statement that Russia had relocated 700,000 children from Ukrainian conflict zones. Additional children remain unidentified due to the Kremlin changing their names, place of birth, and date of birth.

During Istanbul talks on 2 June, Ukraine’s Presidential Office head Andrii Yermak said the Ukrainian team provided Russia with a list of deported children requiring repatriation. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated the list contained nearly 400 names. Russian representatives disputed claims of having taken 20,000 children, maintaining the number involved only “hundreds.”

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented nearly 50% more civilian casualties in the first five months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.

In May alone, at least 183 civilians were killed and 836 injured across Ukraine, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

The data shows that attacks using long-range missiles and loitering munitions caused the most widespread harm across the country. Near frontline areas, short-range drones equipped with high-resolution cameras for precision targeting produced the highest civilian casualty rates. 

“This year has been devastating for civilians across Ukraine, with significantly more deaths and injuries than during the same period in 2024,” stated Danielle Bell, Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. 

Bell described the combination of intensified long-range attacks and frequent short-range drone strikes along the frontline as “a deadly combination for civilians.”

The attacks affected cities across the country, with Kharkiv experiencing particular impact, along with Kyiv, Odesa and other cities located far from active frontlines.

Bell characterized the sustained nature of the attacks as particularly harmful to civilian populations.

“Hours-long nightly attacks with hundreds of weapons sow fear among families who spend their nights in bomb shelters, listening to the sounds of drones flying overhead,” she said. “At this pace and scale, further loss of civilian life is not just possible—it is inevitable.”

The leading U.S.-backed initiative documenting Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children is preparing to shut down after its funding was terminated by the Trump administration, CNN reported on June 11.

The Yale University-based Humanitarian Research Lab, which spearheads the Ukraine Conflict Observatory, has reportedly transferred its data to the U.S. State Department and Ukraine’s government as it closes operations in the coming weeks.

"Right now, we are running on fumes," Nathaniel Raymond, the lab's executive director, told CNN. "As of July 1, we lay off all of our staff across Ukraine and other teams, and our work tracking the kids officially ends."

Since its launch in May 2022, the observatory has compiled evidence of Russian war crimes, including the deportation of Ukrainian children, many of whom were sent to reeducation camps or adopted by Russian families. The project relied on biometric and satellite data and has supported six International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments, including two related to child abductions, according to Raymond.

The database of the observatory contains records on more than 30,000 Ukrainian children allegedly abducted by Russia from over 100 locations, according to an undisclosed source cited by CNN. This figure outstrips estimates by Ukraine's Children of War database, which says that over 19,500 children have been deported or forcibly displaced by Russia.

The program's end leaves what experts call a major gap in accountability efforts.

"The Conflict Observatory’s work cannot be replaced by Europol or other organizations," a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers reportedly wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on June 11, urging the administration to restore funding.

While Rubio temporarily reinstated funding earlier this year to allow the lab to complete data transfers, he confirmed at a March 28 press conference that the program was ultimately defunded as part of government efficiency cuts. The transferred material, including documentation of attacks on civilian infrastructure and filtration sites, is now expected to be shared with Europol within days.

According to Ukraine's Children of War database, only around 1,300 of the abducted children have been brought home so far. Many others remain unidentified due to deliberate efforts by Russian authorities to obscure their identities by altering names and birth records.

Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly emphasized that repatriating abducted children is a non-negotiable condition for any future peace deal with Moscow.

In 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and children’s rights ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova over their roles in the deportation of Ukrainian minors.

As Russia trains abducted children for war, Ukraine fights uphill battle to bring them home

Around the world, abducting a child is a serious crime punishable by years behind bars. But when the kidnapper is Russia, justice remains a distant hope. So does the child’s return home. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has identified over 19,500 children who have been

The Kyiv IndependentDaria Shulzhenko

Three people died and 60 others were wounded, including nine children, when Russian forces conducted a large-scale drone assault on Ukrainian territory during the night of 11 June.

Ukrainian air defense intercepts 49 out of 85 drones

Russian forces deployed 85 Iranian-designed Shahed type drones along with decoy drones and one missile in the overnight attack, according to the Air Force of Ukraine. Ukrainian defense forces successfully intercepted 49 of the aerial targets across multiple regions. The primary targets were Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Odesa oblasts.

Of the 49 neutralized targets, 40 were destroyed by fire weapons while nine were lost or jammed through electronic warfare measures. The attack resulted in confirmed hits at 14 locations, with debris from downed aircraft falling at two additional sites.

Russia kills three people in Kharkiv Oblast

Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv suffered the most severe impact from the attack. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported that enemy forces struck with 17 Shahed-type drones in the midnight, targeting the Slobidskyi and Osnovianskyi districts and killing two civilians.

“There were direct hits on apartment buildings, private homes, playgrounds, enterprises, and public transport,” Terekhov stated, describing damage to burning apartments, destroyed roofs, and broken windows.

The attack also damaged trolleybuses, contact networks, and utility infrastructure. Terekhov emphasized that the targeted locations were “ordinary objects of peaceful life” that should not become military targets.

Kharkiv Regional Administration Head Oleh Syniehubov provided updated casualty figures, confirming that the death toll rose to three after a 65-year-old man died in intensive care from severe burns.

The regional official reported that 60 people were injured in Kharkiv city alone, with nine children aged 2 to 15 among the wounded.

Beyond the drone strikes, Russian forces also deployed various weapons systems against Kharkiv Oblast, including 13 guided aerial bombs, two Molniya-type drones, and two FPV drones.

Odesa Oblast under attack

Odesa Oblast came under assault during the same timeframe, according to the State Emergency Service. The attack caused damage to summer houses, outbuildings, passenger vehicles, and civilian watercraft, with fires breaking out at several locations.

Emergency responders quickly extinguished the blazes, and officials reported no casualties in the region.

Sumy Oblast sees agricultural damage

In Sumy Oblast, a Russian drone struck the Lebedyn community, igniting a fire in a non-residential building used to store agricultural equipment, the State Emergency Service reported. Firefighters successfully extinguished the blaze, and preliminary reports indicated no injuries occurred.

Utility and emergency services across all affected regions continued working to restore damaged infrastructure and assist victims, according to local officials.

A young couple planning to marry died in their home when a Russian missile struck their apartment building in Lutsk, burying them under the rubble.

Russian forces deployed six missiles and 15 Shahed drones against the city of Lutsk in western Ukraine. The strikes resulted in 30 people sustaining injuries, while the targeted eight-story residential building experienced partial destruction.

Mykola and Ivanna lived on the eighth floor but were found dead in the basement after the structure collapsed suffering direct impact from the strike. 

“Their car is parked next to the building, but they are not responding. We hoped for a miracle… But unfortunately, they were killed by Russian terrorists,” said Roman Kravchuk, a deputy on the Lutsk City Council.

Emergency responders found Mykola’s body on 6 June, while Ivanna’s remains were located at 4:15 a.m. the following day.

The large-scale attack on 6 June targeted also Kyiv, Ternopil, Lviv, and several other Ukrainian cities with a massive barrage of over 400 drones and more than 40 missiles, including cruise and ballistic types. The assault resulted in six people killed and around 80 injured alongside widespread destruction of residential buildings, infrastructure, and energy facilities.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy strongly disputed Donald Trump’s recent characterization of the war between Russia and Ukraine as “two kids fighting in a park.”

Zelenskyy emphasized that Putin is “a murderer who came to this park to kill the kids.” According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Russia killed 631 Ukrainian children since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

“We are not kids with Putin at the playground in the park. He [Putin] is a murderer who came to this park to kill the kids,” Zelenskyy said in an exclusive interview with ABC News.

The Ukrainian president argued that Trump cannot fully comprehend the suffering experienced by Ukrainians.

Zelenskyy illustrated this point by describing a conversation with a Ukrainian father who lost his wife and three children in a missile strike. The man told Zelenskyy that every morning upon waking, he searches for his family throughout his apartment, still believing their deaths were a nightmare.

“He wasn’t mentioning any statistics or figures and numbers of strikes,” Zelenskyy said, describing how the father’s words differed from official discussions of casualties.

“He just said, ‘Every morning when I wake up, I’m just looking for my family — I’m looking everywhere in the flat … I still feel that it was a nightmare … a bad dream,'” Zelenskyy shared.

While the president did not specify the family name or what city they were from, he might be referring to the Bazylevych family tragedy which occurred on 4 September 2024, when a Russian hypersonic missile struck their home in Lviv.

Yevheniia Bazylevych and her three daughters—Yaryna (21), a program manager for Lviv’s European Youth Capital 2025 office; Daryna (18), a university student active in cultural studies and volunteering; and Emilia (7), the youngest—were killed in the attack. Their father, Yaroslav Bazylevych, was injured but survived the strike.

Trump “could not feel fully and understand this pain,” Zelenskyy stated, while clarifying that this limitation applies to anyone located thousands of miles away from the conflict.

The water began rising quietly, like a whisper. On the morning of 6 June 2023, residents of Oleshky in Kherson Oblast watched small streams seep through their streets. This happened after Russian troops pulled the trigger and blew up the Kakhovka Plant’s dam to prevent a Ukrainian military advance across the Dnipro. What they unleashed that day terrified scientists. 

By evening, a 4-meter wall of water had swept away everything in its path. But as the floodwaters receded weeks later, they left behind something far more sinister than destroyed homes and drowned livestock reaching the Black Sea. 

“We know that garbage and heavy metals from the bottom of the Kakhovka reservoir didn’t go anywhere—they settled on the sea floor, and during storms they rise again to the upper layers of seawater,” warns Yulia Markhel, leader of the ecological movement Let’s do it Ukraine.

What the water carried from the reservoir’s depths would prove to be one of the most severe environmental disasters of the 21st century, a toxic legacy that had been accumulating in silence for over 60 years, the Ukrainian National Ecology Center reports. 

The sleeping giant awakens

When Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Dam exactly two years ago, they unleashed 18 cubic kilometers of water in just four days. But the water was merely the messenger. What it carried would transform the Black Sea ecosystem for generations.

Local resident Liudmyla Boretska watched the catastrophe unfold from her rooftop refuge.

“Everything was flooded—cemeteries, garbage dumps, cattle burial grounds. Everywhere there were mosquitoes, the smell of death, horrible screams of people and animals, she told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 

But beneath the visible horror, something hidden and far more dangerous was stirring.

The destruction exposed lake bed sediment containing more than 90,000 tons of dangerous heavy metals, a toxic cocktail that had been quietly accumulating on the reservoir floor since 1956.

For decades, industrial waste from mines and factories across the Dnipro basin had settled into the sediment like layers in an archaeological dig.

Each year brought new deposits: manganese, arsenic, lead, cadmium—the metallic signatures of Soviet-era industry.

The contamination spreads

Within days, the contaminated flood surge reached the Black Sea, impacting more than 50% of the northwestern Black Sea area. Satellite imagery revealed a massive brown plume spreading across azure waters, carrying decades of accumulated poison.

Viktor Komorin, who studied fish, mussels, and dead dolphins for toxic substances after the disaster, discovered the true scale of contamination.

“In mussels we found toxic substances exceeding the norm by thousands of times,” he reported.

The filter-feeding mollusks had become living repositories of decades of industrial waste.

What lurks beneath

A couple of days later, all this pollution began reaching the shores of Romania and Bulgaria. Freshwater from the Kakhovka Reservoir entered the Black Sea about 3–4 days after the dam burst and reached the coast of Odesa, reducing the normal salinity of the seawater from the usual 17–18‰ to just 4‰.

The contaminated sediments stretched across 620 square kilometers of exposed lake bed—an area larger than many European cities. In this toxic wasteland, previously absorbed heavy metals were absorbed by vegetation and animals and moved through the local food web.

Historical echoes from depths

As the waters receded, they revealed more than industrial poison. Kherson historian Oleksii Patalakh describes what emerged.

He says the area where the reservoir once stood was a true natural treasure—the green lungs of southern Ukraine. It was a system of rivers, lakes, and islands with incredibly diverse flora and fauna and vast fish stocks, including sturgeon, Suspilne reports. He explains that sturgeon disappeared from the Dnipro after the Kakhovka Reservoir was created.

“In addition, this territory is an archaeological landmark. It includes about five of the eight Zaporizhzhian Sich strongholds. There are fortresses from the time of the Late Scythians, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Ulus of Jochi, more commonly known as the Golden Horde,” he continues. 

There were many ports and fortresses on the islands, such as on Tavani Island, between Beryslav and Kakhovka. There were two satellite fortresses: Mustrit-Kermen, which was connected to Gazi-Kermen, and Mubarek-Kermen, which was connected to Islam-Kermen, present-day Kakhovka. 

He adds that shortly after the water receded in 2023, specialists in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast discovered the remains of a submerged Sich-era church, reconstructed in the early 19th century — the site of Nova Sich.

Patalakh emphasizes that the territory from Khortytsia and downriver lies Zaporizhzhia, the historic land of the Cossacks, Ukrainian national warriors-heroes. According to him, these are ancient Cossack territories, home to many winter settlements and numerous submerged Cossack cemeteries. On the one hand, the water could destroy all this. On the other hand, researchers now have the opportunity to study these objects of historical heritage.

The reckoning ahead

The scale of environmental destruction has prompted calls for new international legal frameworks. This disaster may become the first test case for prosecuting environmental war crimes under international law.

Truth Hounds and Project Expedite Justice researchers concluded that the case “may become the first application of the ICC’s Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute, which concerns causing ‘excessive’ environmental damage compared to expected military advantage”.

Moreover, there is evidence that Russian troops prevented people from evacuation from the flooded areas, despite the deadly threat they unleashed to reach their ghost objective. 

Much of the damage caused by the breach of Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam is irreversible, with likely changes to the environment that could have impacts on ecosystems and human health. The total damage is estimated at nearly $14 billion.

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)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a forceful message on 5 June, highlighting the sheer scale of Russian attacks and warning global leaders that inaction emboldens the Kremlin.

In his 5 June statement, Zelenskyy revealed that since the beginning of the year, Russia has launched nearly 27,700 aerial bombs, approximately 11,200 Shahed-type explosive drones, around 9,000 other attack UAVs, and over 700 missiles, including ballistic ones.

“And that’s in less than half a year,” he noted.

He accused Russia of restructuring its entire state, society, and economy to conduct mass killings in other countries with impunity.

“This is the pace of Russian strikes, and they deliberately set this tempo from the very first days of the full-scale war,” he said.

“Russia is giving the finger to the entire world”

Reacting to Trump’s announcement of his phone call with Putin, Zelenskyy criticized ongoing diplomatic failures.

“Many have spoken with Russia at various levels. But none of these talks have brought a reliable peace,” he stated, arguing that Putin continues to feel “impunity. Even after all of Russia’s horrific attacks, he is reportedly preparing yet more so-called ‘responses’.”

He warned that delays in diplomacy only fuel further aggression.

“With every new strike, with every delay of diplomacy, Russia is giving the finger to the entire world — to all those who still hesitate to increase pressure on it,” Zelenskyy said.

Warning against weakness and silence

Zelenskyy said the only way to stop Putin is by demonstrating strength.

“If the world reacts weakly to Putin’s threats, he interprets it as a readiness to turn a blind eye to his actions,” he said. “When he does not feel strength and pressure, but instead senses weakness, he always commits new crimes.”

According to the Ukrainian president, weak responses amount to silent permission for future atrocities. He thanked all international actors “who tell the killer that he will be held accountable” and stressed that “Russian missiles and bombs must stop taking innocent lives.”

“If the powerful do not stop Putin, it means they share responsibility with him,” Zelenskyy said. “And if they want to stop him but cannot, then Putin will no longer see them as powerful.”

Trump: Putin “will have to respond”

On the same day, Donald Trump stated on Truth Social that Putin warned of retaliation after Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Russian bomber airfields.

“President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” Trump wrote, offering no criticism of Russia’s stated intent to escalate attacks on Ukrainian civilians.

The highly successful Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb targeting Russia’s strategic bomber fleet took place on 1 June, but Trump remained silent about it until referencing Putin’s threats of retaliation.

Russian forces killed and injured civilians across Ukraine in overnight attacks that targeted Ukrainian regions with 80 drones and four missiles on 2 June.

The Russian military deployed 80 Iranian-designed Shahed strike drones and decoy unmanned aerial vehicles, three Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles, and one Iskander-K cruise missile, Ukraine’s Air Forces reported.

Ukrainian defense forces neutralized 52 targets across the eastern, southern and northern regions, with 15 enemy drones shot down by conventional weapons and 37 suppressed through electronic warfare systems.

The strikes primarily targeted Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Donetsk and Kherson oblasts, with confirmed hits recorded in 12 locations across the country.

Russian strike injures children in Kharkiv

Kharkiv experienced a two-phase assault beginning with drone strikes followed by missile attacks, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov and regional administration head Oleh Syniehubov.

Russian forces struck the Kyivsky district with two ballistic missiles, with one projectile hitting near an apartment building and another striking a road dozens of meters from a school.

Six people sustained injuries in the city, including two children with one victim being a seven-year-old boy.

The attacks damaged the facade of a dormitory, a civilian enterprise, three five-story residential buildings, private residences and vehicles.

Russia kills five civilians in Zaporizhzhia Oblast

Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia Oblast killed five people and wounded nine others over a 24-hour period, according to regional military administration head Ivan Fedorov.

Russian forces conducted 593 strikes against 16 settlements, including a missile attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia itself.

The overnight drone assault damaged residential buildings and infrastructure. One private house was completely destroyed while more than 60 others sustained damage, with four apartment buildings also affected.

Russia manipulated a recent exchange of prisoners of war (POWs) with Ukraine by sending mostly ordinary criminals awaiting deportation instead of captured soldiers or pro-Ukrainian activists.

The composition of civilians returned to Ukraine has raised questions about the exchange process and support systems for returnees. According to the organization “Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine,” more than half of the 120 civilians who returned to Ukraine were individuals convicted of non-war-related criminal offenses, Suspilne News reports.

The organization identified two distinct categories among the returnees: 15 prisoners who had been serving sentences in colonies in occupied Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts, and approximately 50 Ukrainian citizens who had completed sentences in Russia but became trapped in deportation centers.

Under normal circumstances, Russian authorities would have deported these individuals to Ukraine after they completed their sentences. However, since Russia’s 2022 border closure due to the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian citizens have remained indefinitely in deportation centers designed for foreign nationals illegally present in Russia.

Oleksandr, a man from Lozova in Kharkiv Oblast, described his experience to Suspilne reporters. After completing a sentence for theft in May 2024 at a Tula colony, he was immediately detained and sent to a deportation center rather than being released.

“We were slaves there. They oppressed us, affected human dignity, treated us not particularly positively,” he stated.

The judicial system perpetuated this detention through renewable three-month deportation orders. When the initial three-month expulsion period expired, courts would issue new three-month decisions, creating an indefinite detention cycle.

Russia recruits prisoners for military operations against their own people

Multiple returnees reported that Russian authorities offered them enlistment in the Russian military in exchange for release and citizenship.

“There were those who agreed. Not only Ukrainian citizens, there were Armenians, Uzbeks, and Tajiks. It’s not their war, but they still go,” Oleksandr explained. “I didn’t agree because my home is Ukraine. I’m a sincere Ukrainian. I don’t need any of that.”

Another returnee Vadym from Kyiv Oblast also told that Russian authorities repeatedly pressured him to join the Russian army.

Vadim traveled to Russia in 2019 but was detained at the border on drug smuggling charges, which he claims were unfair and without evidence. After completing his prison sentence, he was placed in a deportation center. Now after return to Ukraine, he says he wants to “be with loved ones and start life from scratch.”

Prisoners in Russian captivity face beatings and humiliation

The transfer process began abruptly on 21 May, when facility administrators instructed Ukrainian detainees to prepare for departure without explanation. Returnees described harsh treatment during transport, including beatings with electric shock devices and overtightened handcuffs that left visible injuries.

“Police officers in masks rushed in, beat us, shackled us, loaded us into a bus and drove us in an unknown direction,” Oleksandr recounted. 

Another returnee noted that guards would ask which hand hurt from tight handcuffs before shocking it with a taser.

The detainees only learned they were part of a prisoner exchange when they reached the Ukrainian-Belarusian border. Many expressed mixed feelings about their inclusion in the exchange, with Oleksandr stating:

“It would be better if they gave back the guys who fought instead of us. I was ready to endure there further,” he says.

Oleh Tsvily, head of “Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine” characterized Russia’s use of detained Ukrainians as leverage in prisoner exchanges as a departure from previous practices, when deportations typically occurred through Georgia.

“They kidnapped these people to trade with them,” he said, arguing that these individuals should have been released without conditions.

Returnees face challenges back home, some consider joining Ukrainian army

Now being back in Ukraine poses new challenges for returnees as half of them lack proper documentation or have nowhere to go, according to Oleh Tsvily.

Returnee Oleksandr reported that Russian authorities deliberately destroyed his original passport because he “went against the Russian Federation and didn’t support their concepts.”

Petro Yatsenko, representing the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, stated the government tries to address their issues with housing, financial support, and placement. He explains that this exchange was reportedly prepared hastily, limiting Ukraine’s ability to influence the composition of exchange lists.

Returnee Viktor considers joining the Ukrainian army because he felt “ashamed” that he wasn’t in Ukraine “when all this mess started.” 

Viktor from Kharkiv moved to Irkutsk, Russia in 2016 with his Russian wife and daughter, working as a builder and later a market loader. After losing his residence permit, FSB officers detained him at work in October 2024, with an operative later explaining that “a paper came about me that I’m Ukrainian, arouse suspicion and need to be checked.”

He spent five months in a deportation center before being transferred for the prisoner exchange.

The head of “Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine” organization acknowledged that this category of returnees is viewed less favorably by the public, which had hoped for the release of prisoners of war, children, or pro-Ukrainian activists instead.

However, he defended their inclusion in the exchange, emphasizing that these individuals are Ukrainian citizens who refused to take up arms against their homeland. He argued that society should respect their decision to resist collaboration and predicted that some would contribute to Ukraine’s defense efforts.

“I’m confident that some of them will go defend the country. These people will definitely bring some benefit. So there’s no need to spread betrayal! These are living people, they are our citizens,” Tsvily said.

A Ukrainian high school class held their final graduation ceremony at a cemetery to honor a classmate and his two siblings killed in a Russian missile strike.

The high-school students from the school in Korostyshiv, central Zhytomyr Oblast, visited the graves of their 17-year-old classmate Roman Martyniuk and his younger sister Tamara, 12, and younger brother Stanislav, 8, who died on 25 May after the Russian missile hit their home.

“The day of the last bell [traditional event to mark the end of a high school year], which should have been filled with joy, hugs, tears of happiness and farewell to school, turned into a day of silence, grief and deep pain,” the school wrote on Facebook. 

The class teacher conducted the last bell ceremony at the gravesite without the customary loud bells or music. The ceremony was described as being held “with deep reverence, respect and love.”

Instead of traditional graduation celebrations, the students brought toys, cards, and pieces of birthday cake to the cemetery. Tamara would have celebrated her birthday on the day before the ceremony.

“Today we once again felt how war steals not only lives – it steals childhood, youth, holidays, memories that should have been warm…,” the school’s post stated.

Two older children were living separately and survived because they were not home during the strike. Both parents survived the attack, though the mother required surgery and was in serious condition before the funeral, while the father sustained less severe injuries and attended the burial service on 28 May.

The lyceum principal told that Roman excelled in Ukrainian history and demonstrated strong aptitude in physics, a subject that poses difficulties for many peers.

The two younger children were enrolled at the community music school, where they learned to play the domra, a traditional stringed instrument. The siblings were reportedly in preparation for their music school graduation at the time of the attack. Tamara expressed interest in becoming a mathematics teacher like her mother, who survived the strike but lost her children. 

The Kyiv Independent's investigative documentary, "He Came Back," which exposes sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, has won the 2025 Ukrainian journalism award, "Honor of the Profession."

The winners were announced during an award ceremony in Kyiv on May 29.

The documentary, which identifies perpetrators of sexual violence in occupied Ukrainian territories, was recognized in the Best Investigative Report category.

The film was authored by journalist Olesia Bida, a member of the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigations Unit. The team also included editing director Maksym Yakobchuk, researchers Kostiantyn Nechyporenko and Myroslava Chaiun, and editor Yevheniia Motorevska.

"Sexual violence in war is a war crime and a systemic strategy used by Russian forces. "They face no consequences and continue committing these crimes in occupied territories," Bida said, following the award ceremony.

"It meant so much to me that after this investigation was published, one of the soldiers we identified was formally charged by Ukrainian authorities. His case has already been sent to court. I hope one day he will face a real sentence."

Bida called the piece "the most important work of my entire journalism career," and expressed deep gratitude to the Kyiv Independent team for supporting her through 10 months of research and reporting.

"We are endlessly inspired by your work," the Ukrainian competition committee said in a statement, thanking every journalist who submitted work this year. "You are the witnesses and chroniclers of the country's life and its people during the most difficult period of our modern history."

The film previously won the Best Film award at the 2024 Press Play Prague film festival.

Since its foundation in 2023, the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigations Unit has released nine documentary films, exposing Russia's kidnapping of Ukrainian children, torture of prisoners of war, repressions in occupied territories, and crackdown on religious communities.

The "Honor of the Profession" contest, organized annually in Ukraine, celebrates excellence in categories including best interview, war reporting, analytical writing, and publicist essays. This year's winners reflect the difficult reality and courage of reporting in a country at war.

A special nomination from the Supervisory Board of the contest "For dedication to the profession under the most difficult conditions" was posthumously given to late Victoriia Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity after disappearing in August 2023 while reporting from occupied territories.

Her body, returned in February, showed signs of torture, including electric shocks and possible strangulation. A forensic examination revealed missing organs, suggesting an attempt to hide the cause of death.

US President Donald Trump revealed during a recent press conference that he cannot determine whether Russian President Vladimir Putin genuinely seeks to conclude the war in Ukraine.

Trump also indicated his willingness to participate in potential discussions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin if required. 

“Within two weeks we are going to find out very soon if he [Putin] is tapping us along or not. If he is, we will respond a little bit differently,” Trump stated. 

The American president cited recent Russia’s violence as grounds for his skepticism, stating he feels “very disappointed by what has been happening these past few nights, when people are being killed in the middle of what you would call negotiations.”

The American leader criticized ongoing Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, stating that missile strikes against urban areas are unacceptable. Trump questioned Putin’s motivations, saying he doesn’t understand what has changed about the Russian leader, given that “he’s killing a lot of people.”

Following a deadly Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine that killed at least 12 civilians on 25 May, Trump publicly condemned Putin, calling him “crazy” and expressing consideration of new sanctions against Russia.

However, Trump also criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of causing problems with his rhetoric, and blamed both Zelenskyy and President Joe Biden for the continuation of the war, which he claimed would not have started under his leadership.

The Trump’s team also issued an ultimatum that the US will withdraw from negotiations if Russia and Ukraine do not enter direct peace negotiations soon.

Ukrainians held a public farewell ceremony for three siblings who died in a Russian missile attack on 25 May.

The victims were 8-year-old Stanislav, 12-year-old Tamara, and 17-year-old Roman from the Martyniuk family, who lived in Korosten, central Zhytomyr Oblast near Kyiv, according to Hromadske.

Several hundred people attended the ceremony, including family members, teachers, and community members.

The funeral procession moved from a church service to the city cultural center, where crowds filled the square. Attendees formed long lines to place flowers at the coffins, with bouquets arriving continuously throughout the ceremony.

Roman was scheduled to graduate high school within days of his death. His graduation ribbon was placed on the funeral hearse. Pavlo Pozdniakov, director of Lyceum No. 1 where the children studied, described Roman as passionate about Ukrainian history and confident in physics, a subject many students find challenging.

“Roman was on the threshold of his graduation, preparing for university entrance exams and was passionately interested in Ukrainian history. He would argue his point. Along with history, he studied physics. Children are afraid of this difficult subject, but Roman said: no, it’s easy,” Pozdniakov shared.

Both younger siblings attended the local music school, where they studied the domra, a traditional stringed instrument.

Music teacher Larisa Vasilivna recalled teaching Tamara just days before her death, noting the difficulty of accepting the loss of students she knew personally. The children were reportedly preparing for their music school graduation when they died.

“This is the future of our country, the future of our nation, which Russia is now destroying,” Larisa Vasilivna said.

School director Kateryna Grabchuk characterized the siblings as well-behaved students. Teachers remembered Tamara leading her younger brother to classes and both children excelling academically. Tamara had expressed interest in becoming a mathematics teacher like her mother.

The children’s parents were injured in the same attack. Their mother remains hospitalized, while their father attended the funeral with one of their two adult sons, aged 24 and 26.

The attack occurred during a large-scale Russian assault that targeted 13 Ukrainian regions with 69 missiles and 298 drones. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 45 missiles and 266 drones. The strikes resulted in 13 deaths and over 60 injuries nationwide, with Zhytomyr Oblast recording three fatalities and 12 injuries. Korosten mayor Yurii Denysovets declared 25 May “a black day in the city’s history.”

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) has charged a captured Russian marine with war crimes for allegedly executing two unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war during combat operations earlier this year in northeastern Ukraine, according to an official statement issued May 28.

According to the SBU, the soldier, a rifleman with Russia's 40th Separate Marine Brigade, participated in the point-blank shooting of two detained Ukrainian servicemen on Jan. 9 near Kursk. The executions reportedly occurred after a Russian sabotage-reconnaissance group seized a front-line position held by Ukrainian forces.

The SBU alleges the Russian fighters led the two captured soldiers into open ground before shooting them in the back with automatic rifles, killing both instantly.

Just two days later, the same Russian unit came under attack by Ukraine's Special Operations Forces. Ukrainian troops reportedly partially destroyed the unit, capturing the accused marine during a firefight. Investigators say he initially attempted to conceal his role in the killings but was later implicated through evidence collected by the SBU and military counterintelligence.

He has been formally charged under Ukraine's Criminal Code with war crimes including violations of the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment.

The case adds to mounting evidence of systemic war crimes committed against Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian forces — a pattern confirmed by both Ukrainian authorities and international bodies.

At least 206 of the 5,000 Ukrainian POWs repatriated since Russia's full-scale invasion died in captivity, according to data published by Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. In many of these cases, Ukrainian soldiers were tortured, executed, or killed under suspicious circumstances while in Russian custody.

Investigations by Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office are underway into the execution of 268 Ukrainian POWs. The U.N. and human rights groups have recorded dozens of these cases, highlighting incidents in which Russian troops received direct orders to kill surrendered soldiers — a violation of international humanitarian law.

One of the most notorious cases occurred in July 2022, when a Russian missile strike on the Olenivka POW camp in occupied Donetsk Oblast killed over 50 Ukrainian soldiers, most of them members of the Azov Regiment. Independent investigations later suggested Russia deliberately targeted the building with a thermobaric weapon after relocating the prisoners to a specific section of the facility.

In a March 2025 report, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine confirmed growing numbers of executions of Ukrainian POWs by Russian forces, labeling the killings part of a deliberate and coordinated campaign.

Russian soldiers executed 3 unarmed Ukrainian POWs in Donetsk Oblast, prosecutors say

The execution of prisoners of war is a breach of the Geneva Conventions and qualifies as an international crime.

The Kyiv IndependentKateryna Hodunova

The family of 59-year-old Ukrainian soldier Serhii Hryhoriev spent months holding on to hope for his safe return. But instead of a reunion, they were faced with heartbreak when his body was returned from Russian custody. His death, now among over 200 confirmed fatalities of Ukrainian prisoners of war, has become part of a growing body of evidence cited by human rights monitors who warn of systematic abuse, medical neglect, and torture in Russian detention, AP reports. 

Serhii Hryhoriev worked as an office worker at a high school in central Ukraine. He enlisted in the military in 2019, and by early 2022 was deployed to Mariupol. On 10 April 2022, as the Russian siege of the city intensified, he made what would be his final call home. As he had done many times before, he tried to comfort his wife and daughters with the words: “Everything will be all right.”

That was the last time they heard his voice

Two days later, a fellow soldier’s relative informed the family of their unit’s capture. After the city’s fall, over 2,000 defenders were taken into Russian captivity. Soon after, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed to his wife that he had been registered as a POW, which should have ensured legal protections under the Geneva Conventions.

A letter from him arrived in August. It was short, affectionate, and ended with the same words: “Everything will be all right.” But what the family later saw online — a video where he appeared frail, bearded, and toothless — suggested otherwise.

Survivor testimony exposes brutal conditions

Hryhoriev was held at the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky Correctional Colony in Russia’s southwest. Former detainee Oleksii Honcharov, who was imprisoned with him, recounted routine beatings for all captives.

“Everyone got hit — no exceptions,” he told AP.

According to Honcharov, violence continued even when prisoners showed serious health problems. He described months of chest pain that received no medical attention. “Toward the end, I could barely walk,” he said. After returning to Ukraine, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis — a condition increasingly found among former POWs.

Hryhoriev, despite his age, was initially resilient. But over time, he became dizzy and weak, eventually needing assistance to walk. Still, according to Honcharov, guards refused to hospitalize him and instead confined him to a cold, unlit cell, isolated except for a fellow Ukrainian prisoner assigned to watch him. He died there about a month later — on 20 May 2023, as recorded by Russian authorities.

Russians claimed stroke, autopsy showed blunt-force trauma

For more than half a year, Hryhoriev’s family heard nothing. Then, in March 2024, Ukrainian police informed them a body had arrived, tagged with his name and accompanied by a Russian death certificate citing a stroke.

Ukrainian forensic experts performed an autopsy. It contradicted the Russian version, identifying blunt-force trauma to the abdomen and damage to the spleen as the cause of death. His body was finally buried in Pyriatyn, Poltava Oblast, in June.

A growing count of dead, and few clear answers

The case of Hryhoriev is one among at least 206 known Ukrainian POW deaths in Russian custody, based on Ukrainian government figures, AP says. Another 245 are believed to have been executed on the battlefield by Russian troops. Human rights organizations and forensic investigators are trying to document the full scope of the violations.

Forensic analysis of repatriated Ukrainian POWs has revealed signs of torture, including fractures, bruises, signs of gangrene or untreated infections, and sometimes missing organs, according to forensic expert Inna Padei. Ukrainian officials report that Russia often withholds bodies until they are too decomposed for reliable autopsy. These findings, alongside survivor testimony, are being compiled to support war crimes investigations. Amnesty International has also accused Russia of concealing POW conditions and obstructing access to its prisons.

Forbidden stories: Ukrainian journalist went to document torture in Russian detention — her body returned without organs

According to a 2024 United Nations report, 95% of released Ukrainian POWs experienced systematic torture, including beatings, suffocation, mock executions, electric shocks, and sexual abuse. By contrast, the report said that while some Russian POWs were mistreated during their initial capture, abuse stopped once they were transferred to official Ukrainian detention facilities.

A family’s tribute

After Hryhoriev’s death was confirmed, his wife and both daughters marked their wrists with the same phrase he had so often repeated during the war: “Everything will be all right.” To them, he remains not just a victim, but “an angel in the sky.”

Imagine a billionaire fleeing to Moscow after treason charges, then crying on Russian TV about American “Christian persecution.” That’s what just happened — in reverse.

Tucker Carlson just handed his platform to Vadim Novinsky — Russia-born fugitive worth $1.4 billion, wanted in Ukraine for treason — who echoed the Kremlin’s claims about Kyiv “persecuting Christians” from his European exile.

“Ukraine has launched a campaign of persecution against Christians,” declared Novinsky, attending Russian Orthodox services in Zurich while complaining to Western cameras.

Here’s what the Kremlin-linked oligarch forgot to mention: in occupied Ukraine, his beloved church system shoves needles under pastors’ fingernails to force them into Russian spies.

While Trump’s team signals Ukraine may never join NATO to appease Putin, the security state Putin built is electrocuting Protestants for being “American spies” — genuinely shocked that their churches aren’t already wiretapped.

The pastor Russia marked for death

Pastor Oleh — a minister whose name has been changed to protect his family — made one unforgivable choice: he helped Ukrainian war refugees.

His church was located in Berdiansk, a strategic city in southern Ukraine seized by Russian forces just three days into the full-scale war. Surrounded on three sides by the Azov Sea, it became a vulnerable outpost as Ukrainian troops rushed toward Mariupol, trying to save it from what became one of the war’s deadliest sieges.

At first, Pastor Oleh believed in Ukrainian liberation. He cheered when Russian flags were torn down in Kharkiv and Kherson — the only regional capitals Putin’s troops had managed to capture. However, each passing day in occupied territory brought greater risk, especially for someone leading a congregation.

While Protestants make up just 2–4% of Ukraine’s population, they account for nearly a third of all registered religious communities, while also championing the provision of humanitarian aid and social support.

Not surprisingly, Oleh’s Baptist church quickly became a hub for refugee support, especially for civilians fleeing besieged Mariupol.

“People simply lived in the church; we completely opened our doors, fed people, welcomed them… new people arrived every day,” Oleh told Euromaidan Press.

However, that compassion soon drew the attention of the Kremlin’s secret police. As soon as Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) entered the city, the pastor’s humanitarian work gave him a choice no sermon could prepare him for: spy for the occupiers, or face the consequences.

Explore further

Obey to pray: Russia’s ruthless crackdown on faith in occupied Ukraine

The Kremlin’s Holy Trinity: Church, State, and Surveillance

The Russian state has a long history of subordinating religion — a system inherited directly from the Soviet Union.

Despite its official atheism, the USSR reinstated the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) after World War II to extend the Communist Party’s control and expand surveillance over the population. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Kremlin briefly lifted restrictions on religion — but that freedom lasted only two years.

By 1993, the ROC had successfully lobbied to ban foreign missionaries. Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, and with the rise of Patriarch Kirill — a former KGB agent — in 2009, religious repression deepened.

In 2017, Russia branded minority faiths like Jehovah’s Witnesses as “extremist,” while also banning independent missionary work — a direct blow to Evangelical churches, who made up half of those targeted.

As the Kremlin restored Soviet-style religious control, it also revived the secret service’s role in managing church life — an echo of the Soviet legacy where high-ranking clergy appointments required KGB approval.

The symbolic culmination came in 2002, when an Orthodox church was consecrated on the grounds of the FSB headquarters in Moscow — a project initiated by Putin himself, a former FSB chief. Since then, the Russian Orthodox Church has openly aligned with the security service in cracking down on “non-traditional” faiths, while Russia’s secret police actively persecute alternative faiths seen as competitors to the state-controlled church.

How Ukraine’s Protestants became Russia’s marked men

For Ukrainians who have found themselves under Russian occupation, religious freedom quickly turned from a right into a threat to be wiped out.

Unlike Russia, Ukraine’s 1996 Constitution enshrines freedom of religion, paving the way for more than 36,000 religious organizations across 100 denominations to register in the decades since.  This protection has allowed various faiths to grow inside a mainly Orthodox nation, with only Protestants accounting for nearly a million believers before the full-scale invasion.

“In my 26 years as a Protestant, I had never experienced a ban on gathering or street evangelism,” said Pastor Viktor Cherniyavsky, from Luhansk — a city overtaken by Russia in 2014. “Ukraine has always been open and engaged with all denominations.”

However, this openness quickly collapsed under Moscow’s occupation. As the full-scale invasion trapped millions behind Russian lines, Ukraine’s Protestant pastors suddenly found themselves walking a razor’s edge — targeted simply for existing outside the Kremlin’s approved faith.

Explore further

Russia tried to wipe out Ukraine’s Protestants. Their pastors struck back from D.C.

Russia’s holy war on Christian charity

Oleh from Berdiansk felt the contrast almost immediately. When agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) entered the city, his congregation was quickly flagged for distributing humanitarian aid. In the eyes of the occupation authorities, this meant competing with Russian troops, whom the Kremlin portrayed as “liberators.”

“They didn’t accept people who helped unless it was under the Russian flag,” Oleh explained.

His story is far from unique. According to a report by Mission Eurasia, by summer 2022, Russian occupation authorities began treating church-run humanitarian work as a threat to their control. Aid was confiscated at checkpoints and eventually banned altogether if it came from Ukrainian-controlled territory.

“Russian trucks came, and people were given small food packages. The Russian press was always around… It looked like they were training animals. First, they take everything away from the people, then they toss them a pittance and compel them to love, rejoice, and obey,” one eyewitness testified.

Oleh remembers how pressure on Protestant churches quickly escalated. They were branded as “American churches” and their pastors as “American spies” — mirroring the Russian belief that any aid not controlled by the state is foreign subversion.

However, the crackdown on food and shelter was just the beginning. As Oleh recalls, this scrutiny soon spiraled into a full-scale campaign of repression against Protestant Christians — a purgatory unleashed with the blessing of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The grenade ultimatum: spy on your flock or die

The occupiers saw pastors and priests not as spiritual leaders, but as tools of influence. They threatened and pressured them to accept Russian citizenship — and to persuade their congregants to do the same. Without a Russian passport, they were told, they could no longer live or serve in the occupied territories.

But even those who complied weren’t spared. Pastors were coerced into acting as informants for Russian security services, expected to share private information heard during confessions. One day, they even handed Pastor Oleh a grenade.

“They threatened to kill my family if we attempted to leave,” he told Euromaidan Press.

When Russian agents demanded he identify church members with relatives in the Ukrainian military, Oleh refused — to their utter disbelief.

“I knew that some people in my church had children who served in the Ukrainian army. They [the Russians] wanted their names,” Oleh said. “But, of course, thank God, I didn’t say anything about them.”

The experience revealed something deeper: Russian authorities couldn’t grasp the idea of a church independent from the state. In their worldview, any pastor not spying must be a Western agent — a theme echoed across testimonies from occupied territories.

“They saw all churches as a threat, like American churches, American spies,” Oleh explains. “For them, all Protestants are a foreign faith; there should be one faith of the Moscow Patriarchate, no other churches.”

Russia’s Christian love: interrogate, threat, torture, repeat

The persecution of religious leaders in occupied Ukraine follows a pattern: first come interrogations, then threats, then the seizure of church buildings — and finally, arrests, torture, or deportation for those who refuse to cooperate.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian troops have killed or kidnapped at least 29 religious leaders. They reflect a deliberate, systemic policy — one exported from Russia and amplified across occupied Ukrainian territories, with the full backing of Kremlin propaganda.

“There are many different sects in the empire’s south,” said Ekaterina Arkalova, a propagandist on a TV channel founded by the Russian Orthodox Church. “Fighting those sects, all those Protestants and Jehovah’s Witnesses, is the main task of our counterintelligence in those territories.”

This wave of repression didn’t spare Oleh’s congregation. One of his church drivers — who had helped evacuate civilians from besieged Mariupol — was captured and held for 43 days.

“They tortured him very severely. He barely survived,” Oleh said.

Oleh knew his turn would come. Soon after, Russian troops banned his congregation from using their church building, forcing them to pray in secret at members’ homes for six months. His apartment became a makeshift sanctuary — until it, too, was stormed and ransacked.

Faith or flight: the pastor who outran Putin’s agents by one day

In the dead of night, 15 armed Russian soldiers stormed Oleh’s apartment and tore it apart. The first question they asked seemed ripped from another century: “How do you feel about the Soviet state?”

“We will teach you to love the motherland,” the soldier responded, hinting that Oleh was born in the USSR.

It was a warning — and a promise. From that night on, raids and interrogations became routine. So did the pressure to accept a Russian passport, the occupiers’ precondition for continuing to live and serve in the city. During one interrogation, Oleh asked how Protestant churches function inside Russia.

“Those churches are different,” one officer said, implying they had either been fully indoctrinated or were surviving under constant FSB pressure and surveillance.

By winter 2023, after nearly a year of living under the watchful eye of the FSB, Oleh made a decision: he would flee.

With all routes to Ukrainian-controlled territory sealed off by Russian forces, he and his wife and children attempted a high-risk escape through occupied Mariupol, across Russia, and into Estonia, a European Union country.

They drove with barely any rest, racing the clock so that Russian authorities wouldn’t notice their disappearance. They made it just in time: on the very day they crossed the border, the occupiers arrived at their home looking for him.

Today, Oleh lives in the Netherlands, where he continues to serve — this time as a pastor to a Ukrainian refugee community. He now speaks openly about the trauma he endured, hoping to expose the true nature of the “Russian world.”

“Without faith, it would have been very difficult for me not to break,” Oleh says, crediting divine protection for his family’s survival — a miracle many other persecuted clergy never received.

The Orthodox blessing of Protestant torture

Pastor Viktor Cherniyavsky, who escaped Russian captivity nearly a decade earlier, knows this experience all too well. He was abducted shortly after Russian forces seized his native city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine in 2014 — a reminder of how little has changed in Russia’s torture playbook over the years.

“A clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church tried to drive demons out of me and watched as I was tortured for being a Protestant,” he told Euromaidan Press. “He forced me to kiss a cross, pressing it against my face before stepping back to let the beatings continue.”

While imprisoned, Viktor read from a small New Testament that his wife had managed to deliver. After surviving the ordeal and witnessing Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, he made a decision: to join the Ukrainian military.

Knowing what the Russian occupation brings, he chose to defend others. He credits his survival to God’s protection, which he believes allowed him to escape captivity and make it back to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Once the full-scale Russian invasion erupted, this experience — and knowing what Russian occupation brings to more Ukrainians and fellow believers — convinced him to join the Ukrainian army, relying on God’s protection he believes allowed him to be released from Russian captivity alive.

Viktor’s former congregation, however, saw another tactic Russia uses to control “non-traditional” faiths: forced replacement and religious rebranding.

“A pastor from Russia was sent to replace our original pastor, who had fled after receiving threats to his life,” he said.

Under Russian law, all religious groups except the Russian Orthodox Church can only function legally if they register with state-approved bodies — a process that effectively places them under the control of the FSB. In occupied Ukraine, many churches are allowed to continue operating only after agreeing to complete subordination to religious centers inside Russia.

However, even this pseudo-legal survival isn’t guaranteed. Pastor Oleh from Berdiansk recalled, Russian soldiers made no secret of their endgame.

“They said, ‘This is temporary. There will be only the Orthodox Church. We’re starting to sort things out here — and then we’ll sort them out back there,’” he recalled.

This campaign of erasure hasn’t spared anyone — not even the denomination that, by name and tradition, might seem least likely to face repression under Putin’s Orthodox crusade. Instead, it has become target number one in occupied Ukraine.

The church Putin fears most

Russia’s crusade against believers has inflicted its most brutal damage on the very community it claims to protect: Ukraine’s Orthodox Christians.

This persecution didn’t begin in 2022 — but it escalated rapidly after the Ukrainian church formally broke away from Kremlin control. Though the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had long distanced itself from Moscow, it was only in 2019 that its independence was officially recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — the highest authority in the Orthodox Christian world.

That year, the newly-established Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was granted full religious autonomy as a self-governing national church.

The OCU’s legalization triggered a nationwide shift: parishes across Ukraine began transferring en masse from the Moscow-affiliated churches, including nearly 15% of Russian Orthodox parishes in Ukraine. Within a short time, the OCU became the largest Orthodox church in the country, dramatically shrinking the Kremlin’s religious influence.

Not coincidentally, the OCU and its clergy were singled out for systematic repression in the occupied territories.

Even priests from the Russian-affiliated churches — historically aligned with Moscow — were persecuted if they refused to pray for “the victory of Russian arms” or insisted on maintaining their Ukrainian identity.

“At first, they asked how our church differs from an Orthodox church. I said: we are Orthodox, just Ukrainian,” one priest said. “When they realized there was nothing they could use against us, they gave us an ultimatum: either transfer to the Russian Orthodox Church, or face repressions.”

“Pray for Russia or be tortured”: Inside Russia’s Orthodox Inquisition

Torture quickly became a defining feature of Russia’s approach to Ukrainian clergy. Father Vasyl Vyrozub, chaplain and rector of the Odesa Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, was captured in the early days of the invasion. His testimony reveals the brutality masked by religious rhetoric.

“Two Russian soldiers forced me into the split position and stretched me; two of them were wringing my arms and legs, holding my head to the wall,” he recalled. “The third one was beating me from behind — on my kidneys, on my head — and with a stun gun.”

When the interrogators demanded information, the torture escalated:

“They twisted my arms, forced me onto my knees, and shoved a needle under my fingernail. All while shouting, ‘You will tell us. You will confess.’”

His refusal to sing the Russian national anthem during morning roll call — instead reciting The Lord’s Prayer — brought further punishment. Stripped naked and thrown into a freezing punishment cell (6–8°C or 43–46°F), he was left for four days without food, water, or sleep.

Throughout his captivity, Vasyl was subjected to special mistreatment because of his affiliation with the OCU. Russian interrogators kept demanding he admit which department of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) he worked for — unable to comprehend that a priest could exist outside state intelligence structures.

However, Father Vasyl’s ordeal is not an isolated case. Across occupied Ukraine, religious leaders have reported mock executions, electric shocks, threats of rape, and hours-long group beatings — the result of deliberate policy, enforced by the same Russian state that claims to be the guardian of global Orthodoxy.

Explore further

How the Russian Orthodox Church enabled Putin’s war against Ukraine

From blessing war to stealing children: Russia’s holy crimes

The role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the invasion of Ukraine goes far beyond passive compliance.

During the full-scale invasion, the Church became a key Kremlin partner in war crimes. Its involvement has ranged from blessing Russia’s military aggression and spreading propaganda to more grave violations — such as facilitating the deportation of Ukrainian civilians, including children, to Russia, where many have been held in church-run facilities.

The ROC’s hostility to Ukrainian statehood didn’t stop at Russia’s border. Since the 2014 invasion, the Kremlin has actively relied on its Ukrainian proxy — the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) — which before the war accounted for nearly 40% of all Orthodox churches in Ukraine. 

Since 2022, Ukraine has opened over 100 criminal cases against ROC-affiliated priests for aiding Russia’s war effort. Other countries — including Bulgaria and North Macedonia — have expelled Russian clergy on espionage charges.

In response, in August 2024, Ukraine passed a law restricting the activities of religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church. The legislation gave such groups nine months to sever ties with Moscow and re-register under Ukrainian jurisdiction. Those that refused would be subject to legal termination.

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“Not about banning.” Theologian unpacks Ukraine’s new anti-Russian church law

Yet as of 2025, over 90% of UOC-MP parishes have failed to comply. Despite that, more than 8,000 ROC-linked churches still operate in Ukraine-controlled territory, despite Russia’s ongoing war.

Still, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine has seized the opportunity to push a message that Ukraine is the one persecuting religious believers. This narrative has found fertile ground in US conservative circles, even though nearly all UOC-MP churches still remain active within Ukraine.

Pastor Oleh, who lived under Russian occupation and now serves a refugee community in the EU, sees the distortion clearly:

“People who shout that there is no freedom in Ukraine… In Russia, you can’t even shout about it,” he said. “You have to think about it quietly — because the moment you think differently, something bad will happen to you. Such freedom as in Ukraine does not exist anywhere for believers.”

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer and the author of the term “genocide,” predicted the events of 24 February 2022 – Russia’s full-scale invasion – 70 years ago.

Lemkin understood the nature of Russian imperial policy deeply, as he experienced firsthand the horrors of mass extermination based on national identity – his family perished during the Holocaust.

Russia continues to deny Ukrainian sovereignty and the existence of Ukraine as a state, as well as Ukrainians as a distinct people. An article titled “What Russia Should Do with Ukraine,” published in 2022, further equates “denazification” with de-Ukrainization, framing Russia’s policies as a deliberate attempt to erase Ukrainian identity through attacks on culture.

After spending my entire career as a lawyer, I made the decision to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine on 24 February, 2022, fully aware of the historical importance of the moment for my people’s survival. Leaving my comfortable office in downtown Kyiv, my family, and my normal life to serve on the front lines was not an easy choice, but I felt I had no other option when Russia invaded my homeland.

Explore further

“We will kill them all”: Why Russia’s war against Ukraine is genocide

During my service, I helped document Russian crimes against culture, the destruction of monuments, museums, and churches, even when there was no military target nearby. Russians are spending billions on missiles to destroy buildings associated with anything Ukrainian.

A ceasefire on Putin’s terms, regardless of the cost, will not create a lasting peace. President Trump’s desire to stop the killings is indeed noble, but a lack of understanding of the nature of this war could lead to catastrophic historical mistakes, ultimately resulting in even more victims of aggression. 

Vitalii Tytych

Vitalii Tytych is a Ukrainian lawyer and chairman of the board of the Raphael Lemkin Society.

Editor’s note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press’ editorial team may or may not share them.

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Russia has launched at least 31 attacks on hotels in Ukraine since 2022—most of them housing journalists, aid workers, and civilians—according to a new report by Truth Hounds and Reporters Without Borders. These were not random shellings. Many of the strikes used high-precision, high-value ballistic missiles, sometimes in pairs, and often during the night when hotels were most occupied.

The investigation reveals a chilling pattern: a deliberate campaign to silence independent media by targeting the places where journalists work and sleep.

Hotels near the front lines have become lifelines for the press, offering power, internet, and safety in a war zone. But these essential hubs are now under fire. In 30 of the 31 documented cases, the hotels were operating as civilian facilities. The sole exception involved confirmed military use.

By attacking these buildings, Russia is not just striking infrastructure—it’s attacking press freedom itself. The report argues that this pattern of targeting may constitute war crimes under international law.

31 documented hotel strikes show a consistent pattern

Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian hotels at least 31 times since February 2022, injuring 25 journalists and killing one media worker, according to a new study by Truth Hounds (TH) and Reporters Without Borders.

The attacks represent a systematic campaign to silence press coverage of the war, the organizations reported.

Between 24 February 2022 and 15 March 2025, these strikes hit 25 hotels in oblasts heavily affected by the war, including Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipro, Odesa, and Kyiv.

Missile attacks often timed for night, when hotels are full

The frequency of attacks increased dramatically over time: eight hotels were struck in 2022, five in 2023, and 14 in 2024. Most 2024 attacks (11 of 14) occurred between August and October. Four more strikes happened in the first two months of 2025.

Of these 31 attacks, 23 occurred between 8:00 pm and 8:00 am, when hotels are most busy. At the same time, 15 strikes were carried out using 9K720 Iskander ballistic missiles.

The study found that almost all targeted hotels were operating as civilian facilities. Only one had confirmed military use. The others housed civilians—including journalists, aid workers, and volunteers. One of them, Reuters safety advisor Ryan Evans, was killed during a strike on his hotel in Kramatorsk in August 2024.

According to TH, hotels in frontline cities play an important role in supporting journalists’ uninterrupted work. They offer a power supply, stable internet connection, access to bomb shelters, and generally safer conditions for working on news stories.

Beyond media workers, hotels house volunteers, deminers, humanitarian representatives, displaced civilians, and military families visiting loved ones near the front.

Journalists among the injured and killed in hotel strikes

In total, 25 journalists and media professionals have found themselves under these hotel bombings, and at least seven have been injured, according to the report.

The most high-profile case involved Ryan Evans, who had traveled to Ukraine over 20 times with Reuters. On 24 August 2024, a Russian missile struck the Sapphire Hotel in Kramatorsk, killing Evans and injuring two colleagues: American journalist Dan Peleschuk and Ukrainian journalist Ivan Liubysh-Kyrdey.

No military personnel were present in the hotel, according to witness testimonies.

Other journalists were wounded in similar attacks. On 10 January 2024, two missiles—reportedly fired from an S-300 or S-400 system—hit the Park Hotel in Zaporizhzhia, injuring Davit Kachkachishvili of Türkiye’s Anadolu agency and Violetta Pedorych, a Ukrainian producer for France 2.

Kryvyi Rih emerges as a major hotspot in 2024

The intensity of hotel attacks increased sharply in August-October 2024, with Kryvyi Rih in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast becoming a key target. Over the course of several months, Russia attacked at least five hotels in the city.

On the night of 5 March 2025, Russian forces struck the Tsentralny (Central) Hotel in Kryvyi Rih with a ballistic missile. There, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, volunteers from a humanitarian organization, including citizens of Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom, had recently checked in.

The shelling resulted in the deaths of five people and injuries to 32 others. This was reportedly the second time this hotel has been damaged as a result of an attack by Russian forces. On 28 October 2024, it was partially destroyed by a ballistic missile strike.

Civilian hotels hit—even when closed or banning military

Most Russian strikes targeted operational hotels serving civilians—including journalists, aid workers, displaced residents, and business travelers. While military personnel occasionally stayed in some facilities, their presence was minimal and uncoordinated.

A notable example is Hotel Reikartz in Zaporizhzhia, hit by two Iskander missiles in August 2023. At the time, it housed Ukrainian and international journalists, Red Cross and UN staff. Ukrainian military personnel comprised no more than 20-30% of guests—mostly servicemen with families on leave. A children’s camp had just ended hours before the strike, which killed a passerby and injured at least 19.

Other civilian-only hotels were hit with deadly consequences. A two-month-old infant was killed in Zolochiv in February 2024. The owner said, “Once is accidental, twice is tactical.”

In Odesa, the Bristol Hotel—used by journalists and diplomats—was struck by a concrete-piercing missile in January 2025, injuring seven.

Some hotels explicitly banned military personnel. Hotel Kramatorsk enforced a no-uniform policy to avoid being targeted, yet was still struck in 2022 while sheltering only civilians, injuring a female guest.

“We had a rule not to house military personnel or individuals wearing military uniform, as this would put people in danger,” Director Valeriia Karpenko told Truth Hounds.

Even closed hotels were not spared. In Chernihiv, Hotel Ukraina was bombed in March 2022 despite being non-operational during the siege. The Druzhba Hotel in Pokrovsk was hit in August 2023 in a double-tap missile strike that killed 10 and injured 93, days after it had closed for safety reasons.

At the Grand Palace Hotel in Zaporizhzhia, a September 2024 missile strike killed a woman and her 8-year-old son. The hotel had not operated since early in the war. Her husband, the hotel’s co-owner, was severely injured along with their daughter.

“I never housed the military; I was afraid of an attack,” he told Truth Hounds.

Just one hotel used by military, despite Kremlin claims

Among all targeted hotels, only one confirmed case involved military housing. The Profspilkovyi Hotel in Chernihiv was attacked in April 2024, killing 18 and injuring 78.

Pro-Kremlin sources claimed it served as barracks for the 5th Separate Signal Regiment, supported by photographs showing military uniforms and bunks. This represents the sole documented strike on an actual military objective.

Ukraine also struck hotels used by Russian forces

By contrast, over the same period, the Ukrainian Army conducted strikes on hotels in Russian-occupied territories. Truth Hounds identified eight such incidents involving artillery or missile fire. In at least four cases, the hotels were reportedly being used for military purposes, making them legitimate targets under international humanitarian law.

On 11 July 2023, a missile strike hit Hotel Duna in Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, killing Russian officer Oleg Tsokov, deputy commander of Russia’s Southern Military District. The hotel was reportedly struck by a Storm Shadow missile.

Other documented attacks included:

• Hotel Ninel in Kherson (October 2022), resulting in casualties among FSB officers and Russian military personnel.

• A site in Kadiivka (Luhansk Oblast), targeting Wagner PMC fighters.

• Hotel Shesh-Besh in Donetsk (December 2022), where artillery hit the restaurant during the birthday celebration of Dmitry Rogozin, a former Roscosmos director. Several high-ranking military figures were present, including commanders from the 1st Army Corps of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

Hotel strikes leave journalists traumatized and displaced

According to a survey by Truth Hounds and Reporters Without Borders, 52% of Ukrainian respondents reported psychological effects from the attacks on hotels, citing heightened stress and emotional trauma caused by the constant threat of being targeted. Among foreign respondents, 35% reported similar impacts.

One Ukrainian journalist interviewed for the report described the lasting toll. Injured in a missile strike on a hotel used by the press, she spent ten days in the hospital—five of them unable to walk.

“It’s like a flash in front of my eyes—the pain, crawling on the ground, the smell of dust, the struggle to breathe,” she recalled. Since then, she has avoided field assignments and rarely travels outside the capital. “I had never felt fear like this before.”

The persistent targeting of hotels has forced journalists to reconsider where they stay, moving away from hotels and toward less visible alternatives. This shift hampers their ability to operate safely in war zones. According to the survey, 13% said they had reduced or halted assignments to high-risk areas because of the strikes.

The impact extends beyond fear. 64% cited logistical complications due to limited access to safe accommodation, while 44% reported ongoing emotional trauma.

In response, many journalists have adopted new safety measures: using unmarked vehicles, removing “press” labels from bulletproof vests, and turning off geolocation—a survival strategy in today’s reporting landscape.

Russia spreads disinformation to justify hotel attacks

Russian authorities have repeatedly pushed the narrative that journalists in Ukraine are actually “foreign mercenaries,” using this label to justify strikes on hotels where media workers stay.

The Russian Ministry of Defence rarely comments publicly after such attacks. When it does, it typically frames them as legitimate military operations, claiming the hotels were used by Ukrainian forces, intelligence operatives, or foreign fighters.

After the strike on Hotel Druzhba, the Ministry claimed it had destroyed a Ukrainian command post. In the case of Hotel Reikartz in Zaporizhzhia, officials said the target was “foreign mercenaries.” Following the Kharkiv Palace Hotel strike, they alleged the deaths of Ukrainian intelligence agents and “up to two hundred foreign mercenaries”—despite witness accounts confirming no military personnel were present.

A revealing case is that of Hotel Sapphire in Kramatorsk. In February 2023, Russian officials claimed the hotel hosted Western journalists under Ukrainian security supervision to fabricate war crimes. Eighteen months later, Russian forces struck the same hotel—killing Reuters safety advisor Ryan Evans, despite its well-known civilian function.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later dismissed Evans as “some kind of safety adviser,” while Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova baselessly described him as a former MI6 agent. Reuters and Evans’ family refuted the claim.

“The targeting of journalists has a direct impact on the scale and depth of war reporting,” the study warns, “reducing the presence of independent observers who could document potential violations of international law.”

Targeting journalists may be a war crime

Under international humanitarian law and international criminal law, attacks on hotels accommodating civilians — including journalists and humanitarian workers — may constitute war crimes. The Geneva Conventions prohibit the intentional use of violence to instill fear among civilians.

The study found that Russian strikes on Ukrainian hotels followed a deliberate pattern, not random acts of war. Available evidence shows that Ukrainian military personnel, when present, were there for private purposes, not military operations — with the sole exception of the Profspilkovyi Hotel.

Meanwhile, Russian narratives blur the line between civilians and combatants, increasingly portraying journalists as legitimate military targets. This violates their protected status and undermines press safety. The consistency of such claims, despite a lack of evidence, suggests a systematic attempt to justify unlawful strikes.

“Russia’s disregard for its obligations under international humanitarian law is clear,” the study states. “Instead of protecting journalists, Russia treats them as expendable—or even legitimate targets.”

Russian forces struck the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast with two powerful aerial bombs on the morning of 25 May, killing two civilians and injuring three more, the Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office reported.

According to the report, the first strike occurred at approximately 09:26, when a FAB-500 air-dropped bomb hit a one-family home residential area. The explosion killed two women, aged 84 and 57. A 60-year-old man and a 75-year-old woman were injured. A 68-year-old woman suffered an acute stress reaction.

More than 20 homes and outbuildings were either destroyed or damaged in the initial attack.

Russia’s massive missile and drone assault kills at least 12 civilians, injures 52, between two prisoner swaps

Second strike used FAB-1500 bomb with UMPK

The Prosecutor’s Office says roughly 30 minutes after the first explosion, a second airstrike was launched on the same city. Preliminary reports indicate that Russian forces used a FAB-1500 bomb equipped with a Universal Gliding and Correction Module (UMPK), a guidance kit that increases accuracy and allows bombs to be dropped from a distance. 

This second strike damaged at least 15 additional residential buildings. No further casualties were reported in the follow-up attack.

Prosecutors launch war crimes investigations

The Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office has initiated pre-trial investigations into suspected war crimes under Article 438 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code. Prosecutors, in coordination with police investigators, are conducting procedural actions to document and investigate the strikes carried out by Russian military personnel.