Ukraine Project

Russia baselessly accused Ukraine of failing to conduct a prisoner of war (POW) exchange and to repatriate the bodies of killed in action (KIA) soldiers on June 6 — part of Kremlin efforts to undermine mutually agreed upon confidence building measures with Ukraine. Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky, Russian First Deputy Chief of Information of the General Staff's Main Directorate (GRU) Alexander Zorin, and Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin claimed on June 7 that Russia was prepared to exchange severely wounded and sick POWs, POWs under the age of 25, and 6,000 bodies of KIA soldiers on June 6 as Russia and Ukraine agreed to during the most recent bilateral talks in Istanbul on June 2.

A senior Ukrainian official reported that the Russian military intends to seize half of Ukraine by the end of 2026. Russian forces are highly unlikely to be able to make such large advances in such a narrow time frame, given Russia’s current offensive capabilities and assuming that the flow of Western aid to Ukraine continues.

Russian forces are reportedly sustaining an average of 1,140 casualties per day and suffering disproportionately high personnel casualties for marginal, grinding territorial gains. Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) news agency ArmyInform reported on June 5 that an unnamed NATO official stated that Russian forces are sustaining an average casualty rate of 1,140 personnel per day, of whom nearly 975 are killed in action (KIA) – a much higher number of killed than the standard one-to-three KIA-to-wounded-in-action (WIA) ratio.

The Kremlin is fixating on recent train derailments in Russia in order to further long-standing Kremlin narratives claiming that Ukraine is an illegitimate negotiating partner that is uninterested in peace, likely to distract the broader information space from recent Kremlin officials' statements about Russia's own disinterest in a negotiated settlement. Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with members of the Russian government on June 4 and discussed the May 31 collapse of two railway bridges in Kursk and Bryansk oblasts.

Russian occupation officials continue to articulate plans for the forced removal and deportation of Ukrainian children over the course of Summer 2025.

Kremlin officials publicly acknowledged that Russia seeks the “complete destruction” of Ukraine, indicating Moscow’s disinterest in good faith peace negotiations and a near-term resolution to the war.

Ukrainian and Russian delegations met in Istanbul on June 2 and only reached agreements about prisoner of war (POW) exchanges. Russia's refusal to give Ukraine its memorandum with its terms for a peace settlement before the meeting ensured that the meeting was largely unproductive and further protracted the negotiation process.

Russia and Ukraine are engaged in an active technological race to develop and deploy drones with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Russia and Ukraine are competing to advance these AI/ML-powered drones to automate drone interoperability, targeting, and battlefield analysis. The successful integration of AI/ML drones could enable Russian and Ukrainian forces to reduce their reliance on human drone operators and defenders, bypass electronic warfare (EW), including jamming, reduce human limitations in target identification, and speed up decision-making processes involved in drone warfare.

Ukraine conducted a large-scale and simultaneous series of drone strikes against multiple air bases in Russia on June 1. Sources within Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) told various media outlets that the SBU conducted widespread first-person view (FPV) drone strikes that struck four air bases in Russia. The SBU sources reported that Ukrainian forces struck Belaya Air Base in Irkutsk Oblast; Olenya Air Base in Murmansk Oblast; Dyagilevo Air Base in Ryazan Oblast; and Ivanovo Air Base in Ivanovo Oblast. The SBU sources confirmed that Ukrainian drone operators struck 41 Russian strategic bombers, including A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers – fixed-wing aircraft that Russia uses to detect Ukrainian air defenses and launch cruise missiles against Ukraine.

Russian officials' public statements continue to demonstrate that Russia maintains wider territorial goals in Ukraine beyond the four oblasts that Russia has illegally declared as annexed. Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairperson Andrei Kartapolov told Kremlin newswire TASS on May 31 that Ukraine risks losing Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Sumy, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Mykolaiv cities if Ukraine refuses a peace settlement and claimed that every day that Ukraine delays a diplomatic solution to the war worsens the conditions for Ukraine.