ISTANBUL (AP) — Delegations from Russia and Ukraine were to meet in Turkey on Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, although expectations were low for any significant progress on ending the three-year war after a string of stunning attacks over the weekend.

Ukraine said Sunday it launched a spectacular surprise attack on four Russian airbases thousands of kilometers (miles) apart, destroying more than 40 warplanes. The raid was unprecedented in its scope and geographic reach, targeting bases in Russia’s Arctic, Siberia and Far East more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine.

The head of the Ukrainian security service, Vasyl Maliuk, who led the planning of the operation, said its success was “a major slap in the face for Russia’s military power.” He said the drones struck simultaneously in three time zones and the complex logistics took over a year and a half to prepare.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a “brilliant operation.”

Meanwhile, Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones — 472 — at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defenses. That was part of a recently escalating campaign of strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine.

Members of the Ukrainian delegation arrive at the Ciragan Palace for Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Emrah Gurel

Hopes not high for Istanbul talks

Amid the escalation in fighting, the talks in Istanbul appeared unlikely to make much progress.

U.S.-led efforts to push the two sides into accepting a ceasefire have so far failed. Ukraine accepted that step, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Sunday that “Russia is attempting to delay negotiations and prolong the war in order to make additional battlefield gains.”

The relentless fighting has frustrated U.S. President Donald Trump’s goal of bringing about a quick end to the war. A week ago, he expressed impatience with Russian President Vladimir Putin as Moscow pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third straight night. Trump said on social media that Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”

Senior officials in both countries have indicated the two sides remain far apart on the key conditions for stopping the war.

The first round of talks, held on May 16, also in Istanbul, ended after less than two hours. While both sides agreed on a large prisoner swap, there was no breakthrough.

Ukraine upbeat after strikes on air bases

Ukraine was triumphant after targeting distant Russian air bases. The official Russian response was muted, with the attack getting little coverage on the state-controlled television. Russia-1 TV channel on Sunday evening spent for a little over a minute on it with a brief Ministry of Defense’ statement read out before images shifted to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian positions.

Zelenskyy said the setbacks for the Kremlin would help force it to the negotiating table, even as its pursues a summer offensive on the battlefield.

“Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy,” he said at a summit Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania with leaders from the Nordic nations and countries on NATO’s eastern flank.

Ukraine has occasionally struck air bases hosting Russia’s nuclear capable strategic bombers since early in the war, prompting the Russian air force to redeploy most of them to the regions farther from the front line.

Because Sunday’s drones were launched from trucks close to the bases targeted in five Russian regions, military defenses had virtually no time to prepare for them.

Many Russian military bloggers chided the military for its failure to build protective shields for the bombers despite previous attacks, but the large size of the planes makes that a challenging task.

The attacks were “a big blow to Russian strategic airpower” and exposed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow’s military capabilities, according to Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

“This is hard to underestimate,” O’Brien wrote in an analysis.

Once again, eyes turn to Istanbul

Zelenskyy said that “if the Istanbul meeting brings nothing, that clearly means strong new sanctions are urgently, urgently needed” against Russia.

The Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was in place, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said in a message posted on the Ukrainian Embassy WhatsApp group.

The Russian delegation, headed by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, arrived the previous evening, Russian state media reported.

Officials said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would chair the talks, with officials from the Turkish intelligence agency also present.

International concerns about the war’s consequences, as well as trade tensions, drove Asian share prices lower Monday while oil prices surged.

Front-line fighting and shelling grinds on

Fierce fighting has continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and both sides have hit each other’s territory with deep strikes.

Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, killing three people and injuring 19 others, including two children, regional officials said Monday.

Also, a missile strike and shelling around the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing five people and injured nine others, officials said.

Russian air defenses downed 162 Ukrainian drones over eight Russian regions overnight, as well as over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday.

Ukrainian air defenses damaged 52 out of 80 drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian air force said.

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Associated Press writers Suzan Frazer in Ankara, Turkey; Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Addis Ababa, June 2, 2025 (ENA)— In a major escalation of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Kyiv has launched a surprise drone strike on Russian military airbases.

The attacks came just a day before the two sides initiate the second round of peace talks that has been anticipated to resume in Istanbul, Türkiye today.

Ukraine said on Sunday it targeted Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers at a military base deep in Siberia.

According to Ukrainian official, at least 40 Russian warplanes were struck.

President Volodymyr Zelensky described the operation as “an absolutely brilliant result,” saying planning began 18 months ago.

“An absolutely brilliant outcome. And an outcome produced by Ukraine independently,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app, noting that the operation had taken more than a year and a half to prepare. “This is our longest-range operation.”

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on Sunday that it had hit Russian military planes worth a combined $7 billion.

“$7 billion: This is the estimated cost of the enemy’s strategic aviation, which was hit today as a result of the SBU’s special operation,” the agency said in a social media post.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday, causing several aircraft to catch fire.

The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. The ministry said air defenses repelled the assaults in all but two regions, Murmansk and Irkutsk.

“In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire,” the ministry said.

Earlier, Russia launched over 400 drones at Ukraine in what Kyiv described as the largest drone attack of the war so far.

Russia also said it had advanced deeper into the Sumy region of Ukraine.

Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to meet in Istanbul today.

LONDON — The United Kingdom will build new nuclear-powered attack submarines and create an army ready to fight a war in Europe as part of a boost to military spending designed to send a message to Moscow — and Washington.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain “cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses” as he pledged to undertake the most sweeping changes to Britain’s defenses since the end of the Cold War more than three decades ago.

“We have to recognize the world has changed,” Starmer told the BBC. “With greater instability than there has been for many, many years, and greater threats.”

The government is to respond to a strategic defense review commissioned by Starmer and led by George Robertson, a former U.K. defense secretary and NATO secretary general. It’s the first such review since 2021, and lands in a world shaken and transformed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and by the re-election of President Donald Trump last year.

Months after Britain’s last major defense review was published in 2021, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson said with confidence that the era of “fighting big tank battles on European landmass” are over. Three months later, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

Starmer’s center-left Labour Party government says it will accept all 62 recommendations made in the review, aiming to help the U.K. confront growing threats on land, air sea and in cyberspace.

Defense Secretary John Healey said the changes would send “a message to Moscow, and transform the country’s military following decades of retrenchment, though he said he does not expect the number of soldiers — currently at a historic low — to rise until the early 2030s.

Healey said plans for defense spending to hit 2.5% of national income by 2027 a year are “on track” and that there’s “no doubt” it will hit 3% before 2034.

Starmer said the 3% goal is an “ambition,” rather than a firm promise, and it’s unclear where the cash-strapped Treasury will find the money. The government has already, contentiously, cut international aid spending to reach the 2.5% target.

Starmer said he wouldn’t make a firm pledge until he knew “precisely where the money is coming from.”

Even 3% falls short of what some leaders in NATO think is needed to deter Russia from future attacks on its neighbors. NATO chief Mark Rutte says leaders of the 32 member countries will debate a commitment to spend at least 3.5% of GDP on defense when they meet in the Netherlands this month.

Monday’s announcements include building “up to 12” nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines under the AUKUS partnership with Australia and the United States. The government also says it will invest 15 billion in Britain’s nuclear arsenal, which consists of missiles carried on a handful of submarines. Details of those plans are likely to be scarce.

The government will also increase conventional Britain’s weapons stockpiles with up to 7,000 U.K.-built long-range weapons.

Starmer said rearming would create a “defense dividend” of well-paid jobs — a contrast to the post-Cold War “peace dividend” that saw Western nations channel money away from defense into other areas.

Like other NATO members, the U.K. has been reassessing its defense spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Healey said Russia is “attacking the U.K. daily,” with 90,000 cyberattacks from state-linked sources directed at the U.K.’s defense over the last two years. A cyber command to counter such threats is expected to be set up as part of the review.

“This is a message to Moscow,” Healey told the BBC.

It’s also a message to Trump that Europe is heeding his demand for NATO members to spend more on their own defense.

European countries, led by the U.K. and France, have scrambled to coordinate their defense posture as Trump transforms American foreign policy, seemingly sidelining Europe as he looks to end the war in Ukraine. Trump has long questioned the value of NATO and complained that the U.S. provides security to European countries that don’t pull their weight.

James Cartlidge, defense spokesman for the main opposition Conservative Party, welcomed more money for defense but was skeptical of the government’s 3% pledge,

“All of Labour’s strategic defence review promises will be taken with a pinch of salt unless they can show there will actually be enough money to pay for them,” he said.

Ukraine destroys Russian bombers with shocking barrage of drones ahead of peace talks

toggle caption AP/Ukrainian Security Service

MOSCOW and KYIV — Ukraine attacked Russia with a series of drone strikes on military air bases deep in the Russian heartland on Sunday — an operation that appeared timed to influence a new round of Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire talks set to take place in Istanbul Monday.

After more than three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this carefully planned attack, intended to hit bombers that launch missiles on Ukrainian cities, was celebrated by Ukrainians, who called it “Operation Trojan Trucks” on social media.

Ukraine’s Security Service smuggled first-person view drones laden with small explosives onto trucks driven deep into Russia. The operation was recognized by Ukrainian officials as a much-needed win.

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“The enemy has been bombing our country almost every night from these aircraft, and today they actually felt that retaliation is inevitable,” Vasyl Malyuk, the head of Ukraine’s security services, said in a statement.

The drones — deployed from trucks parked along highways in proximity to Russian military installations — were used to strike 41 heavy bomber jets in bases as far away as Murmansk in Russia’s Arctic north and Irkutsk in Siberia, more than 2,700 miles away from the Ukrainian border.

Malyuk said the drones were hidden under the roofs of wooden cabins placed on trucks. These roofs were opened remotely, and the drones flew out to hit the Russian bombers, he said.

“Our strikes will continue as long as Russia terrorizes Ukrainians with missiles and Shaheds,” he said, referring to the Iranian-designed drones that have played a central role in Russia’s aerial assault on Ukraine

toggle caption AP/Ukrainian Security Service

In an earlier statement about the operation, officially dubbed “Spiderweb,” Ukraine’s security service claimed it destroyed $7 billion worth of Russia’s strategic aviation with the strikes — about a third of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers

Russian officials downplay impact

News of the operation was the talk of both Russia and Ukraine.

One video posted online showed the drones take off from a truck bed parked along a highway as the Russian narrator let obscenities fly. Another shows a Russian serviceman swearing into the camera as planes burn behind him. One pro-Kremlin military blogger referred to the attack as a “Russian Pearl Harbor.”

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In his evening video address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the “perfectly prepared” operation using 117 drones had been planned for more than a year and a half under the nose of Russia’s security service.

“Our people operated in different Russian regions in three time zones,” he said. “And our people were taken out of Russian territory on the eve of the operation. Those who helped us are safe.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry later confirmed the attacks on the military bases but played down their impact — claiming “only several pieces of aviation technology caught fire.”

The ministry also said its forces had thwarted additional attacks on three other bases and made several arrests — without providing details. It added no one had been injured in the attacks.

Neither the Ukrainian or Russian claims on the damage occurred could be independently verified.

Russian trains derail

The drones were far from the only violence over the weekend.

At least seven people were killed and more than 104 injured after a bridge collapsed on a passenger train traveling through western Russia’s Bryansk region Saturday night — sending debris and several trucks onto the train compartments below.

Images shared on social media showed stunned passengers trying to climb out of smashed carriages in the dark.

Meanwhile, Russian railway authorities say a separate rail bridge collapsed in the neighboring Kursk region hours later — derailing a freight train and injuring several crew members.

Russia’s Investigate Committee said it had launched a criminal probe into both incidents on terrorism grounds — but pulled back on initial claims the bridges had both collapsed due to planted explosives.

toggle caption AP/Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service

Still, several prominent Russian politicians were quick to blame Ukraine and suggest it was reason enough to continue the war at any cost.

“Our answer will be a buffer zone so large that it prevents the penetration of terrorists onto our territory in the future,” wrote Andrei Klishas , a senior member of Russia’s upper house Federation Council.

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While Ukrainian authorities did not comment on either train derailment, Ukraine’s military intelligence did confirm a hit on a Russian military train moving supplies in an occupied part of the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia.

Russian drone strikes

Russia also carried out attacks — launching more than 470 drones and several missiles at targets across Ukraine, in what Ukrainian authorities said was the largest single-day air assault since the war began.

The most deadly: what Ukraine’s army said was a “missile strike on the location of one of the training units” — killing a dozen soldiers and injuring more than 60. Ukraine’s military rarely confirms losses and did not disclose the precise location of the training camp, though Zelenskyy said in his evening address that it was in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region.

The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack “out of a personal sense of responsibility” for the casualties. “An army where no one is held responsible for losses dies from within,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Ukraine has also accused the Kremlin of massing some 50,000 troops at its border near Sumy in northeastern Ukraine in advance of a possible summer offensive — even as Kyiv and Moscow have engaged in some of their first direct peace talks in over three years amid pressure from the Trump administration .

Peace talks

The weekend action came as both sides geared up for a second round of negotiations in Istanbul on Monday.

The two sides are expected to discuss so-called “memoranda” — essentially counter proposals outlining terms for any future peace accord.

Writing on social media, Zelenskyy said his priorities for the talks include a full and unconditional ceasefire, the release of prisoners and the return of abducted children.

President Trump has been a strong advocate for the direct talks — saying their progress, or lack thereof, will do much to determine the future of U.S. engagement in the Ukraine conflict.

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Even as Trump has threatened sanctions against Moscow over its perceived slow-walking of the negotiations, he and his administration have also made clear they believe Ukraine should accept it cannot beat its larger neighbor militarily and make concessions.

Yet if Moscow was seen as driving the terms of negotiations, political observers in Moscow suggested Ukraine’s surprise drone operation had at least undermined that dynamic for now.

“The Ukrainian delegation is headed to Istanbul clearly not feeling itself the ‘losing side of the war,’ wrote Moscow-based analyst Georgi Bovt in a post to social media .

Bovt reminded that Trump once told the Ukrainians they “don’t have the cards right now” to negotiate a favorable end to the war.

“Apparently, they found them,” added Bovt.

NPR producer Hanna Palamarenko contributed to this report from Kyiv.

Skip next section Lavrov and Rubio speak on telephone ahead of Istanbul peace talks

06/01/2025 June 1, 2025 Lavrov and Rubio speak on telephone ahead of Istanbul peace talks

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to each other about the new round of peace talks due to take place in Istanbul on Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“The situation linked to the Ukraine crisis was discussed,” the ministry said.

Lavrov and Rubio “also exchanged views on various initiatives concerning a settlement of the Ukraine crisis, including plans to resume direct Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul on June 2.”

The ministry also said that Rubio expressed condolences over deaths that occurred when two bridges were blown up in separate Russian regions bordering Ukraine.

The US State Department said Rubio reiterated US President Donald Trump’s call for continued direct talks between Russia and Ukraine to achieve “a lasting peace.”