Ukraine army chief vows to expand strikes on Russia

KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine’s top military commander vowed to increase the “scale and depth” of strikes on Russia in remarks made public Sunday, saying Kyiv would not sit idly by while Moscow prolonged its three-year invasion.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled in recent weeks.The last direct meeting between the two sides was almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks have been scheduled. Russian attacks on Ukraine have killed dozens of people during the interim, including in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, according to officials.

“We will not just sit in defence. Because this brings nothing and eventually leads to the fact that we still retreat, lose people and territories,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky told reporters.

Syrsky said Ukraine would continue its strikes on Russian military targets, which he said had proved “effective”.“Of course, we will continue. We will increase the scale and depth,” he said.Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war, targeting energy and military infrastructure sometimes hundreds of kilometres from the front line.

Kyiv says the strikes are a fair response to deadly Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians.At least four people were killed in an overnight Russian strike on an apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, while a strike on a Ukrainian army training ground later in the day killed three others, officials said.

In wide-ranging remarks, Syrsky conceded that Russia had some advantages in drone warfare, particularly in making fibre-optic drones that are tethered and difficult to jam.“Here, unfortunately, they have an advantage in both the number and range of their use,” he said.

He also claimed that Ukraine still held 90 square kilometres (35 square miles) of territory in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched an audacious cross-border incursion last August.“These are our pre-emptive actions in response to a possible enemy offensive,” he said.

Russia said in April that it had gained full control of the Kursk region and denies that Kyiv has a presence there.Moscow occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its invasion in 2022 -- in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014. Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal to prolong its full-scale offensive on the country and to seize more territory.

The Russian army said Sunday that it had captured the village of Petrivske in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region.Russian forces also fired at least 47 drones and three missiles at Ukraine between late Saturday and early Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said.