Biden says Putin won’t stop with Ukraine as ‘Moscow fails in Kharkiv offensive’

Ukrainian forces have for the first time hit a latest-generation Russian Sukhoi Su-57 fighter jet at an air base inside Russia, Kyiv’s GUR defence intelligence agency said on Sunday, showing satellite pictures which it said confirmed the strike.

In a Telegram post, the GUR did not specify how the Su-57 was hit or by which unit of the Ukrainian military.

A popular Russian pro-war military blogger who calls himself Fighterbomber and focuses on aviation said the report of the strike on the Su-57 was correct and that it had been hit by a drone.

The GUR said the aircraft was parked at the Akhtubinsk airfield, which it said was 589 km (366 miles) from front lines in Ukraine between Ukrainian and Russian invasion forces.

Russia has put former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on its wanted list, Russian state media reported, citing the Interior Ministry’s database.

Russian state news agency Tass said Tymoshenko was listed as wanted on unspecified criminal charges.

She reportedly joins Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, on the same list, which also includes scores of officials and lawmakers from Ukraine and NATO countries.

Tymoshenko and her Batkivshchyna (the Fatherland) party did not immediately comment Saturday.

Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet, reported that both Zelenskyy and Poroshenko had been listed since at least late February.

A Moscow court has ordered a French citizen accused of collecting information on military issues in Russia be held in jail pending investigation and trial.

Laurent Vinatier was arrested in the Russian capital on Thursday as tensions have flared between Moscow and Paris following French president Emmanuel Macron’s statements about the possibility of deploying the country’s troops in Ukraine.

The authorities accused Mr Vinatier of failing to register as a “foreign agent” while collecting information about Russia’s “military and military-technical activities”, which could be used to the detriment of the country’s security.

They did not provide details of the accusations beyond alleging that Mr Vinatier repeatedly travelled to Russia to collect this information. Under Russian law, it is a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison.

Mr Vinatier appeared in court on Friday. Russia’s state news agency Tass cited his lawyer as saying in the courtroom that he admitted his guilt and maintained that he simply did not know about the requirement.

As Russia continues pressing on with its all out war in Ukrainian territories, many families have made desperate attempts to flee their war-ravaged towns.

A family of refugees now living in the city of Kharkiv recounted the horrifying story of their last-minute evacuation as Russian soldiers approached.

A mother and her five children were living in the village of Zakharivka, just a few miles from the Russian forces advancing across the border into Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. The region has been the scene of intense fighting for weeks.

“Mummy, when will this war end?” nine-year-old Sasha asked his mother.

Read Tom Watling’s full report recounting the family’s escape.

Russia has put former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko on its wanted list, Russian state media reported, citing the Interior Ministry’s database.

Russian state news agency Tass said Ms Tymoshenko was listed as wanted on unspecified criminal charges.

She reportedly joins Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, on the same list, which also includes scores of officials and lawmakers from Ukraine and Nato countries.

Ms Tymoshenko and her Batkivshchyna (the Fatherland) party did not immediately comment Saturday.

Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet, reported that both Mr Zelenskyy and Mr Poroshenko had been listed since at least late February.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian army has failed in its Kharkiv offensive.

“A very significant result is that the Russian army failed. The direction is strengthened. And it will be strengthened more,” Mr Zelensky said.

Russia launched its offence in Kharkiv Oblast on 10 May where it managed to advance as far as 10kms. However, the Ukrainian push halted the Russian military’s advance near the first line of defence.

“We are now restraining them as much as possible and destroying the Russian units that enter our land and terrorize the Kharkiv region,” he said.

Ukrainian attacks left at least 28 people dead as Moscow and Kyiv continued to engage in drone strikes overnight, Russia-installed officials in the partially-occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Luhansk said.

A Ukrainian attack yesterday on the small town of Sadove in the Kherson region killed 22 and wounded 15 people, Moscow-appointed governor Vladimir Saldo said.

Russian state news agency Tass cited Mr Saldo as saying that Ukrainian forces first struck the town with a French-made guided bomb, then attacked again with a US-supplied HIMARS missile.

He said Ukrainian forces had “deliberately made a repeat strike to create greater numbers of casualties” when “residents of nearby houses ran out to help the injured.”

Officials declared Saturday a day of mourning in Luhansk, and public events will be similarly cancelled today and tomorrow in Kherson.

Further east, Leonid Pasechnik, the Russia-installed governor in Ukraine’s partially occupied Luhansk region, said yesterday that two more bodies had been pulled from the rubble following Friday’s Ukrainian missile attack on the regional capital, also called Luhansk.

Russian state news agency Interfax cited regional authorities as saying this brought the death toll to six. Pasechnik also said 60 people were wounded in the attack.

Joe Biden has said in France that Russian president Vladimir Putin is not going to stop with the war in Ukraine and all of Europe was threatened.

French president Emmanuel Macron welcomed his American counterpart, Mr Biden, in Paris yesterday for a state visit that included talks about the Middle East, Ukraine, and trade.

“The United States is standing strong with Ukraine. We’re standing with our allies,” Mr Biden said.

“We are standing with France,” he added.

“Putin is not going to stop with Ukraine…. All of Europe will be threatened. We’re not going to let that happen.”

The two countries will work harder to prevent a regional escalation from Israel’s war with militant group Hamas in Gaza and focus on calming tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, Mr Macron told reporters at the Elysee presidential palace, with the US president at his side.

Ukrainian air defence and mobile drone hunters groups shot down nine out of 13 Russian drones over four regions of the country, the air force said on Saturday.

The Iranian-made Shahed drones were downed over the central Poltava region, southeastern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and the Kharkiv region in the northeast, the statement said. One X-59 Russian missile launched from Russia’s Kursk region was also downed.

Serhiy Lysak, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, said the overnight drone attack damaged commercial and residential buildings and also a power line. Details of the damage in other regions were not immediately clear.