Russia said on Saturday June 17 that it had repelled a Ukrainian drone attack targeting an oil refinery in the Briansk region, bordering Ukraine. “Russian air defense systems in the Novozybkov district overnight repelled an attack by Ukrainian forces on the Druzhba oil refinery”wrote on Telegram the governor of the Bryansk region, Alexander Bogomaz. “Thanks to the professionalism of our soldiers (…), three drones were destroyed”, he assured. Drone attacks against Russian territory and the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014 have increased in recent weeks, after the announcement of a counter-offensive by kyiv. Follow our live.
The African mediation delegation in Saint-Petersburg. The day after Volodymyr Zelensky rejected his offer of mediation, the African delegation headed for Saint Petersburg (northwestern Russia), where it was expected by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The delegation led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday offered to mediate peace in the conflict, saying from the Ukrainian capital that there should be “a de-escalation on both sides”. She was met with an end of inadmissibility from the Ukrainian head of state, who denounced “a deception” of Moscow in full counter-offensive of its armed forces.
kyiv claims to obtain “tactical successes” in the south. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claims to have liberated a handful of localities and a hundred square kilometers, mainly on the southern front. “Ukrainian forces continue to conduct both offensive and defensive operations with relative success”, said Friday evening Ganna Maliar, Deputy Minister of Defense. In the south, “our units achieve tactical success in virtually every area and direction in which they advance”she added.
According to Putin, the Ukrainian counter-offensive has “no chance” of succeeding. From Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Putin for his part assured that the Ukrainian counter-offensive had not “no chance” to succeed, and that Western countries would be obliged to come back to him, on his terms. “And we will see when and what we can talk to them about”, he launched. At the same time, the Russian president announced on Friday that he had transferred the first nuclear weapons to Belarus, concretizing the deployment announced in March by Moscow.