Russia Delivers Greatest Air Strikes Yet on Ukrainian Targets
June 30—The Russian Defense Ministry announced June 29 that overnight “the Russian armed forces delivered a mass strike by air-, ground-, and sea-based long-range precision weapons, Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missile systems, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles, at Ukrainian defense industry [plants] and oil refineries.”
According to accounts in the Western media, this was the largest air attack of the war and coincided with further Russian advances on land in the Donetsk Region. The Financial Times reported: “Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired a staggering 537 aerial weapons in a single overnight barrage that began late on Saturday, including 477 explosive drones and decoys and 60 missiles of various types. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 211 drones and 38 missiles.” FT added that “Ukraine’s air force said one of its F-16 pilots, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustymenko, was killed after his aircraft sustained damage while downing seven aerial targets.”
While previous nights’ aerial bombardment had targeted drone factories in Kiev and elsewhere, according to Russian and online military analysts, the June 28-29 barrage hit many targets in western Ukraine. In addition, there was another barrage against the Kremenchuk Oil Refinery in Ukraine’s central Poltava Region, the country’s last working refinery, which had been nationalized by the Zelenskyy government to produce fuel for military vehicles. Its demolition will hurt Armed Forces of Ukraine logistics in the Donbass, where there are reports of a decisive Russian move towards encirclement of the hub city of Pokrovsk. Farther south in Donetsk Region, Russian forces last week captured the area of large lithium deposits near the village of Shevchenko, according to Military Watch Magazine and other media; the field is one of the deposits eyed by the Trump Administration’s resource-grab “deal” with Kiev.
FT reports on earlier comments by Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov that Moscow’s aim is “to exhaust our air defense.” NATO's Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted to the new massive Russian assault by pleading for more American weapons: “Ukraine needs to strengthen its air defense—the thing that best protects lives,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “These are American systems, which we are ready to buy.” The Trump Administration has refused Zelenskyy's requests for these systems, as well as for renewal of stocks of ATACMS missiles, on which sources report, new restrictions on their use against targets inside Russia have been put in place.
Meanwhile, sources report that President Donald Trump's envoy to the crisis Steve Witkoff is taking steps to restart moribund negotiations between Russia and Ukraine as mediated by the U.S. These sources say that the U.S. may have proposal about arm shipments and their deployment that might unlock a ceasefire between the two parties.