Ukraine-Russia Conflict: Moscow Unleashes Largest Missile and Drone Assault Since War Began

Russia fired a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said.

Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, probably having been electronically jammed.

Zelensky reported the air raid alert signalled all night across Ukraine.

A Ukrainian F-16 fighter pilot died in a crash while repelling a Russian air attack that involved hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, authorities said on Sunday, as Moscow intensifies night-time air barrages in the fourth year of war.

“Tragically, while repelling the attack, our F-16 pilot, Maksym Ustymenko died,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Today, he destroyed 7 aerial targets.

“My condolences to his family and brothers-in-arms. I have instructed that all the circumstances of his death be investigated. Ukrainian aviation is heroically protecting our skies. I am grateful to everyone who is defending Ukraine.

Zelensky called for more support from Washington and Western allies to bolster Ukraine’s air defences after the attack, which damaged homes and infrastructure across the country and injured at least 12 people, according to local authorities.

“They do want to have the anti-missile missiles, OK, as they call them, the Patriots,” the US president said. “And we’re going to see if we can make some available. We need them, too. We’re supplying them to Israel, and they’re very effective, 100 per cent effective. Hard to believe how effective. They do want that more than any other thing.”

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree on the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, the presidential website said on Sunday.

Ukraine ratified the convention in 2005.

“Support the proposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine to withdraw Ukraine from the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction of September 18, 1997,” the decree, published on Zelenski’s website, stated.

A senior Ukrainian lawmaker, Roman Kostenko, said that parliamentary approval is still needed to withdraw from the treaty.

“This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded. Russia is not a party to this Convention and is massively using mines against our military and civilians,” Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on national security, defence and intelligence, said on his Facebook page.

“We cannot remain tied down in an environment where the enemy has no restrictions,” he added, saying that the legislative decision must definitively restore Ukraine’s right to effectively defend its territory.

It remains unclear whether this will be debated in parliament.

Russia launched its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine overnight, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday, part of an escalating bombing campaign that has further dashed hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the three-year-old war.

Russia fired a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said.

Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, probably having been electronically jammed.

Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine’s air force, told the Associated Press that the overnight onslaught was “the most massive air strike” on the country, taking into account both drones and various types of missiles.

North Korea’s deployment of its troops to Ukrainian territory will represent “significant battlefield inflection”, the Institute for the Study of War.

“The North Korean and Russian military commands authorising the deployment of North Korean forces to Ukrainian territory would mark a significant battlefield inflection that may improve Russian forces’ ability to sustain simultaneous offensive operations in multiple directions, which the Russian military has traditionally struggled to conduct,” the US-based think tank said in its latest assessment.

According to the South Korean intelligence, North Korea may deploy an unspecified number of additional North Korean forces to Russia to fight against Ukraine as early as July or August 2025 and that North Korea continues to arm Russia with artillery ammunition and missiles.

A Russian missile attack killed three people and wounded at least 14 in the city of Samar in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Friday, the governor said.

This was the second Russian missile attack in the last three days on the industrial city in central Ukraine. Regional officials gave no immediate details on damage.