🔴 Live: Russia launches overnight air attack on cities across Ukraine

Issued on: 20/06/2023 – 07:17Modified: 20/06/2023 – 07:18

6:35am: Russia launches overnight air attack on Ukrainian cities

Russia launched a widespread overnight air attack on Ukraine targeting the capital and cities from east to west as most of the country spent the night with air raid sirens blasting for several hours.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said that according to preliminary information, Ukraine’s air defence systems shot down 28 out of 30 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia launched.

About 20 enemy targets were identified and destroyed by the forces and our air defence in the airspace around Kyiv, Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app.

“Another massive air attack on the capital,” Popko said.

The military administration of Lviv, a city of about 700,000 people and 70 kms (43 miles) from the border with the NATO country of Poland, said Russia hit a “critical infrastructure” in the city, sparking fire.

According to preliminary reports, there were no casualties.

4:15am: Biden says threat of Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is ‘real’

President Joe Biden said on Monday the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is “real”, days after denouncing Russia’s deployment of such weapons in Belarus.

On Saturday, Biden called Putin’s announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus “absolutely irresponsible”.

“When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy,” Biden told a group of donors in California on Monday.

“They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real,” Biden said.

9:50pm: Russian army ‘better prepared’ than before for counteroffensive

During the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, eight villages on the southern front have been recaptured, according to the Ukrainian government. FRANCE 24’s Ukraine correspondent Gulliver Cragg has the latest from the ground. 

“The Ukrainians are also admitting that they are facing a Russian army that seems rather better prepared in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk now than the army they faced in the Kharkiv region in late August/early September last year,” he says.

Key developments from Monday, June 19

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had lost no positions in their counteroffensive against Russian troops, while enemy forces had sustained only losses.

“In some sectors, our forces are moving forward, in others they are defending positions or resisting assaults and intensified attacks from the occupiers,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

Earlier on Monday, Kyiv accused Hungary of barring access to eleven Ukrainian prisoners of war that Russia handed over to the EU country.

Read yesterday’s liveblog to see how the day unfolded.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)