UKRAINE and Russia exchanged 1,000 prisoners of war each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, their largest exchange in the three-year war, following a Russian proposal made during talks in Istanbul on May 16.
But any confidence built by that gesture may have been dissipated by Russia’s launching of its largest long-range aerial attacks against Ukrainian civilians during the same three days.
Russia launched more than 900 kamikaze drones and 92 missiles, killing at least 16 civilians. Those attacks followed days of Ukrainian strikes on Russian military infrastructure in Russia’s Tula, Alabuga and Tatarstan regions, in which it used at least 800 drones.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Tuesday that Germany might supply Ukraine with the 1,000km- (620-mile)-range Taurus missiles it has asked for at any time, without warning Russia, strengthening Ukraine’s ability to devastate Russian military factories.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he would impose no range limits on the weapons supplied to Ukraine. And on Wednesday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Berlin, Merz announced that Germany would help Kyiv to develop long-range missiles of its own.
The Kremlin has reacted with alarm. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “If such decisions are made, they will absolutely go against our aspirations to reach a political settlement.” Russia requested a UN Security Council meeting “in connection with the actions of European states trying to prevent a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis”.
Yet even before the announcements by Germany, the prospect of any “peaceful settlement” had been dealt a blow by the drone and missile exchanges between Moscow and Kyiv.
Unlike Ukraine’s, Russia’s drones landed in cities, lighting up the skyline with exploding apartment buildings.
Ukrainian defenders managed to down 82 percent of the drones, which is lower than their usual rate. Military intelligence sources told The Economist that Russia was flying its drones at an altitude of more than 2km (1.3 miles), out of the range of mobile heavy machinegun units, and had adapted the drones to use Ukraine’s own internet signal for navigation, immunising them from electronic interference.
Russia also pressed on with its ground assaults in eastern Ukraine, and claimed to have captured six settlements in the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv and Donetsk. Russia also expanded a salient near the town of Pokrovsk, its main target this year, in preparation for a wider ground offensive.
