Ukraine-Russia war live updates: Poland scrambles aircraft after Moscow launches air strikes on western Ukraine

The Ukrainian military said on Monday that it had struck the Vniir electronic plant in Russia’s Chuvashia region overnight.

The facility specialised in manufacturing navigation equipment used in Shahed-type drones, guided aerial bombs and high-precision weapons, it added in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

Tenor Vladislav Gorai, a soloist with the Odesa National Opera, died on Sunday while engaged in a volunteer mission in the northern region of Sumy bordering Russia, opera officials said.

Coleen Rooney has said Unicef support for Ukrainian families has been a “lifeline” that is “changing lives”.

The media personality recently travelled to Poland with Unicef to see how Soccer Aid donations have directly supported Ukrainian families who were forced to flee their homes.

The 39-year-old said she could not “imagine” what Ukrainian refugee families must be going through, emphasising how important it is to stand with them.

She said: “I can relate to being a mum and the first thing (you would do) in that situation is to get out of danger, to make sure that the kids are OK and we can find somewhere.

“I couldn’t imagine what was going through their heads… the emotions.”

According to the Russian defence ministry, units of the 90th Tank Division of the Central Grouping of Russian forces have reached the western frontier of Ukraine’s Donetsk region and are attacking the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region.

“The enemy does not abandon its intentions to enter the Dnipropetrovsk region,” Ukraine’s Southern Defence Forces said on Telegram. “Our soldiers are courageously and professionally holding their section of the front, disrupting the occupier’s plans. This work does not stop for a minute.”

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said the Dnipropetrovsk offensive showed that if Ukraine did not want to accept the reality of Russia’s territorial gains in peace talks then Moscow’s forces would advance further.

The pro-Ukrainian Deep State map showed Russian forces very close to the Dnipropetrovsk region, which had a population of more than 3 million before the war, and advancing on the city of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region from several directions.

A Ukrainian military spokesman, Dmytro Zaporozhets, said that Russian forces were trying to “build a bridgehead for an attack” on Kostyantynivka, an important logistical hub for the Ukrainian army.

Donald Trump has been shown to be wrong, wrong and wrong again about Vladimir Putin. He was wrong again when he was asked if Ukraine’s “Spiderweb” drone strikes against Russian bombers had changed his view of the cards the Ukrainians have: “They gave Putin a reason to go and bomb the hell out of them,” he said.

This is the same logic to which President Trump has cleaved from the start: that the Ukrainian people provoked the full-scale invasion of their country by wanting to be an independent nation facing to the west.

Production was temporarily suspended at an electronics company in Russia’s Volga river region of Chuvashia, some 1,300km from the border with Ukraine, after two drones fell on the plant’s territory, the head of the region said on Monday.

The strike – among the deepest into Russia by a Ukrainian drone in more than three years of the war – caused no casualties, Chuvashia governor Oleg Nikolayev said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

But “the responsible decision was made to temporarily suspend production to ensure the safety of employees” of the Vniir enterprise where the drones fell, Nikolayev said.

It was not immediately clear whether the drones caused any damage. Mr Nikolayev said that another drone fell onto some fields in the area of the capital of the region, Cheboksary.

Donald Trump’s administration has redirected at least 20,000 anti-drone missiles originally designated for Ukraine to American forces in the Middle East, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Ukraine was hoping to receive the missiles from the US to help counter relentless Russian drone attacks, which include swarms of Iranian-designed Shahed-type drones, Mr Zelensky said.

“We have big problems with Shaheds… we will find all the tools to destroy them,” Mr Zelensky said. “We counted on this project — 20,000 missiles. Anti-Shahed missiles. It was not expensive, but it’s a special technology,” he told ABC News.

The plan has been agreed upon with previous president Joe Biden’s administration and its defence secretary Lloyd Austin.

At least 12 civilians were killed and 65 injured by Russian attacks across Ukraine in the last 24 hours, according to local reports.

Russia launched nearly 50 drones overnight targeting civilians and infrastructure across Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s air force.

Six civilians were killed and 44 injured in Kharkiv Oblast alone, Ukraine’s national police said.

Russia has accused Ukraine of delaying the swap of prisoners of war and return of the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers, though Ukraine denied those claims.

Russia said it was moving bodies towards the border and television showed refrigerated trucks containing the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers on the road in the Bryansk region.

Ukraine accused Russia of playing propaganda games and said that the exchange of prisoners of war and the bodies of fallen soldiers was scheduled for next week. Russia said Ukraine was playing politics with the dead.

The Russian defence ministry has released images of what it says are lorries carrying the refrigerated bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.

The lorries are at an ex-change area Novaya Guta, Belarus on the boarder of Ukraine.

However, it is scheduled for next week, Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief (HUR), said.

“The start of repatriation measures following the negotiations in Istanbul is scheduled for next week, as authorised persons were informed on Tuesday (3 June),” Mr Budanov posted on Telegram.