Ukraine’s security service has hit the Kerch Bridge linking Russia to Crimea with underwater explosives after what it said was “months of planning” – and released a video of the strike. Catch up on today’s developments below and submit a question for our next Q&A with Michael Clarke.
Tuesday 3 June 2025 21:12, UK
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Security and defence analyst Professor Michael Clarke will be answering your questions on the war in Ukraine tomorrow. Submit yours in the form at the top of the page.
Clarke takes a look at them each week and offers his insights on the likes of peace negotiations, the latest from the battlefield and Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin.
We’re pausing our live updates on the war in Ukraine but it’s been a busy day. Here’s a recap:
Mykhailo Drapatyi has been appointed commander of Ukraine’s joint forces after submitting his resignation as ground forces commander, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced.
Drapatyi had resigned on Sunday after a Russian missile strike killed at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers at a training camp in the Dnipro region.
“This is a conscious step dictated by my personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy at the 239th training ground, which resulted in the deaths of our soldiers,” the commander wrote on Facebook after the attack.
But today, he was summoned to a meeting with Zelenskyy.
“I reported everything that is currently known about the tragedy at the training ground. About every step – who was there, who was responsible for the people, who had to act,” he wrote on his Telegram.
“I explained to the head of state the reasons for my decision. The president listened, supported and suggested focusing on the main thing – the war, the front, victory.”
Zelenskyy has said another commander, whom he has not identified, would take charge of land forces.
In Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s northeast, Kyiv’s troops have been firing at Russian positions.
Russian troops have recently expanded in the region after Vladimir Putin’s promise to create a buffer zone along the border that might prevent long-range Ukrainian attacks hitting Russian soil.
And the Kremlin continues to intensify pressure on Ukraine as it advances into the northeast of the country, with reports that troops are gearing up for a summer offensive.
Emergency crews have restored power to at least 700,000 residents across a swathe of southern Ukraine controlled by Russian forces, officials report, a day after Ukrainian drone attacks knocked out electricity substations.
We reported earlier that Ukrainian attacks were said to have triggered power cuts in swathes of Russian-controlled territory in the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (see post at 7.50am).
There was said to be no impact on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station.
Now, Russia’s energy ministry has said Telegram: “Thanks to the coordinated work of power engineers, the power supply to all customers has now been fully restored.”
Russia has claimed parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and is now trying to capture the rest of those regions.
It claims the move is about security and securing the future of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers there.
Ukraine has said it is land grab by Moscow and has vowed to retake the lost territory.
Ukraine has “thought through a campaign of guerilla action against Russia”, our military analyst Michael Clarke says after three separate attacks.
On Saturday Ukraine targeted two railway bridges in Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk, causing them to collapse.
The day after, Ukraine launched dozens of drone attacks on Russian air bases, destroying bombers and jets.
And this morning, Ukraine hit Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, in an underwater explosion after an operation that took months.
“Ukraine is showing Russia ‘we can do this'” with these attacks, Clarke says.
“Ukraine has thought this through – whether it be successful or not we don’t know – but they have thought through a campaign of guerilla action against Russia.”
You can watch Clarke’s analysis here…
In Washington, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has answered questions on the war in Ukraine at her latest press briefing.
She was asked why Donald Trump has been silent on Ukraine’s weekend drone strikes on Russian long-range bombers and whether the attacks show Volodymyr Zelenskyy “had some cards” in the war after all. That wording refers to the Oval Office showdown when the US president told the Ukrainian leader he “does not have any cards”.
Dodging the first part of the question, Leavitt said Trump “remains positive on the progress that we’ve seen” in the four months since he came to office, which culminated yesterday in Ukraine and Russia meeting for direct talks in Istanbul.
“But he [Trump] is also a realist and he realises these are two countries that are at war,” she added. “He’s working hard to solve this conflict.”
Asked if Trump approved Ukraine’s decision to strike nuclear-capable bombers, she said: “I would like the president to speak on that himself.”
She was also asked if Trump was informed about the attacks, to which she replies: “He was not.”
Over the weekend, Ukraine launched an unprecedented attack on Russia’s long-range bombers.
Kyiv officials said the attack on Sunday damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia, including the remote Arctic, Siberian and Far East regions more than 4,300 miles from Ukraine.
Ukraine has been invited to the upcoming NATO summit this month, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
The Netherlands is scheduled to host a summit of NATO leaders in The Hague between 24-25 June and further military and political support for Ukraine is expected to be a key topic at the summit
On the summit, the Ukrainian leader has said: “We were invited to the NATO summit. I think this is important.”
Zelenskyy did not specify who would be representing Ukraine at the event.
Zelenskyy has been calling on NATO to offer security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal with Russia.
He has also been pushing for Ukraine to join the defence alliance and even said he is willing to give up his presidency for it.
But Moscow has said the conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards.
The Russian authorities say road traffic on the Kerch Bridge has restarted after a Ukrainian strike closed the crossing to Crimea for hours today.
As we’ve reported, the Ukrainian security service, known by its acronym SBU, released a video showing an explosion that damaged the foundations of the bridge, which links Russia and illegally annexed Crimea.
The SBU said it detonated 1,100kg of explosives on the seabed overnight in an operation that took several months to set up.
It was the third Ukrainian strike on the bridge since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Earlier today, a Telegram account associated with the bridge said traffic resumed across it as of 9am local time, before later being suspended again.
Russia will not be able to restart the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant any time soon, the UN’s nuclear safety chief has said after satellite images suggested Moscow intends to link the facility to its own grid.
IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said the Russians had “never hidden the fact” that they want to restart the plant in southeastern Ukraine, a week after a Greenpeace report found Moscow was building new electricity lines for the plant.
Speaking to Reuters in Kyiv, Grossi said water would have to be pumped from the nearby Dnipro River for the plant, which is shut down, to be restarted.
“We are not in a situation of imminent restart of the plant. Far from that, it would take quite some time before that can be done,” he said, adding the plant’s machinery, which has not been operating for three years, would have to be thoroughly inspected before any restart.
Satellite images in the report showed construction to the west of Berdyansk in the Zaporizhzhia region and north of Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine.
Greenpeace said it had identified Russian engineers constructing an electricity high voltage power line for the nuclear plant.
The site, Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, was taken over by Russia in March 2022. Ukraine and experts say any attempt by Russian technicians to restart the plant would be dangerous because they are not certified to operate it.
Yesterday, Ukrainian and Russian delegations met for a second round of peace talks but made no strong progress towards ending the war.
The two sides only reached an agreement about prisoner of war exchanges during their one-hour negotiations.
At the table, the Russian side also presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities.
And Ukraine’s defence minister Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian delegation, told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response.
Looking at the talks, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) notes that Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation, stated that Russia proposed a two-to-three-day ceasefire on unspecified areas of the front to allow both sides to retrieve bodies from the battlefield.
The US-based thinktank says 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”.
“ISW continues to assess that Russia is trying to disrupt the peace process and prolong the war in order to make additional battlefield gains,” the thinktank adds.
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