EDITORIAL: Five Ukrainian oblasts under bombs — the terror night of June 22

EDITORIAL: Five Ukrainian oblasts under bombs — the terror night of June 22

Introduction: The geography of barbarity

Five oblasts hit in one night

In the night of June 22–23, 2026, Russian forces conducted simultaneous attacks across five Ukrainian oblasts: Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk. The toll: five civilians killed and 29 wounded. In Donetsk, two people were killed in Druzhkivka and one in Sloviansk. In Kharkiv, a 40-year-old man died in Hrushivka, Kupyansk district. In Kherson, a 61-year-old woman died in hospital from a Russian drone strike on June 21. Those names, those ages, those cities: they are the human coordinates of the systematic terror that Vladimir Putin continues to unleash on Ukraine.

Alongside those murders, Ukrainian air defenses shot down 118 of 135 Shahed drones and variants launched from Russian bases at Oryol, Kursk, Bryansk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, and Millerovo. That intercept rate of over 87 percent illustrates both the remarkable progress of Ukraine's defenses and the structural limits of any anti-drone defense: even at 87 percent effectiveness, 17 projectiles slip through — and 17 Shahed drones are enough to kill people, destroy infrastructure, and sustain the daily terror over a nation of 38 million citizens.

The logic of Russia's systematic terror

Those simultaneous, multi-oblast nighttime strikes are not simply opportunistic military operations. They follow a deliberate doctrine: maximize geographic dispersion to saturate Ukrainian defense resources, target civilian areas to maintain psychological terror, and sustain constant pressure on infrastructure to slow Ukraine's reconstruction and war effort. In Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces conducted 1,050 strikes across 56 settlements in a single day — a staggering figure that illustrates the industrial intensity of the Russian bombing campaign.

Kherson sustained attacks on more than 40 settlements by drones and artillery. Kharkiv and 16 other settlements were struck by Molniya, FPV, and other missile and drone types. Dnipropetrovsk was hit by drones, artillery, and guided aerial bombs. This simultaneity is not accidental — it is planned to maximize damage while minimizing interception chances. It is 21st-century industrial warfare applied to civilian terrorism.

Donetsk: three dead in cities that symbolize resistance

Druzhkivka and Sloviansk under Russian shells

Druzhkivka and Sloviansk are two cities in Donetsk that have embodied Ukrainian resistance since 2014. Sloviansk was briefly occupied by pro-Russian separatists in 2014 before being liberated. Druzhkivka is an industrial city that has maintained functioning despite its proximity to the front. Both cities were struck in the night of June 22–23, 2026, killing three people. The figures published by Ukrainska Pravda on June 23 do not include casualties from Mariupol and Volnovakha — two cities fully under Russian occupation, where civilian victims remain unrecorded by Ukrainian authorities.

The situation in Donetsk oblast is particularly dire because it is the theater of the war's most intense ground combat. Front-line cities sustain daily bombardments that make civilian life nearly impossible. Druzhkivka, roughly forty kilometers from the active front, regularly receives guided bombs and ballistic missiles. Every citizen who stays in those cities makes the courageous choice not to abandon their home — and often pays a tragic price for that choice.

Donetsk: an attrition front without respite

On June 28, 2026, the Ukrainian General Staff reported 241 clashes in 24 hours — a figure that illustrates the combat intensity. The Donetsk front accounts for the majority of those engagements, with ongoing fighting around Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, Chasiv Yar, and other towns. Russia maintains constant pressure but advances extremely slowly — at the pace of a snail, as the NATO Secretary General put it — at the cost of colossal human losses. Ukraine defends every meter of ground with fewer personnel and fewer resources, but with a determination that Russian losses do not seem to erode.

NATO has documented that Russia loses between 30,000 and 35,000 personnel per month in this conflict — more in a single month than the USSR lost in ten years of war in Afghanistan. Those losses accumulate in Donetsk more than anywhere else. And yet Moscow keeps sending men to die on that front, feeding the machine that creates Russian and Ukrainian orphans and widows alike.

Kherson: more than 40 settlements struck by drones and artillery

The city of Kherson under permanent terror

Kherson oblast occupies a particularly painful geographic position in this war. The city of Kherson itself — liberated by Ukraine in November 2022 — is separated from Russian positions by the Dnipro River alone. From the occupied eastern bank, Russian forces can strike the city with artillery, drones, and missiles from fixed positions just a few kilometers away. In the night of June 22–23, more than 40 settlements in Kherson were attacked — including the cities of Kherson, Antonivka, Bilozerka, Chornobaivka, Beryslav, and Stanislav. The toll: one dead and 12 wounded.

The destruction was considerable: four high-rise residential buildings damaged, ten private houses, a cultural institution, a public building, a gas station, a mobile communications mast, and vehicles. The 61-year-old woman who died in hospital had been struck the previous day by a Russian drone in the Dniprovskyi district of Kherson. That pattern — a person wounded one day, dying in hospital the next — is revealing of the injuries Shahed drones cause: typically fragments, blasts, traumas incompatible with prolonged survival.

The Kherson district: a population under permanent siege

The population of the city of Kherson has shrunk dramatically since the start of the war and further since the 2022 liberation. Those who stayed made a conscious choice to remain in a city that Russian forces bombard daily from across the Dnipro. That is not resignation — it is a form of existential resistance. To leave is to abandon the city, to give Putin the symbolic victory of emptying liberated urban centers. To stay is to risk your life at every air alert.

Ukrainian authorities have evacuated most children and vulnerable people. But thousands of residents continue to live and work in a city under constant bombardment. Essential infrastructure — water, electricity, heat — is regularly damaged and regularly repaired by maintenance teams working through air raid alerts. That heroic, invisible daily existence is the real fabric of Ukrainian resistance, sustained for more than four years.

Kharkiv: a target city since day one

A 40-year-old man killed in Hrushivka

In Kharkiv region, the night of June 22–23 killed a 40-year-old man in Hrushivka, Kupyansk district. A 48-year-old woman was wounded in Kharkiv, and seven others — five women and two men — were wounded in Bohodukhiv. Russian forces struck the city of Kharkiv and 16 other settlements with Molniya, FPV, and other missile and drone types. Damage includes residential buildings, warehouses, industrial facilities, a grain elevator, and a commercial establishment. Each item on that list illustrates Russia's dual target: civilians and Ukraine's productive economy.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city with approximately 1.4 million inhabitants before the war, is only 40 kilometers from the Russian border. Since 2022, it has been struck by thousands of missiles, bombs, and drones. Much of its population has fled. Residential areas in the northern and eastern parts of the city are regularly hit. Despite this, the city functions: its factories produce, its hospitals treat, its universities teach under conditions that peacetime societies would find unimaginable.

The Kupyansk district: a community in permanent limbo

The Kupyansk district, where the 40-year-old man was killed on the evening of June 22, is particularly exposed. The city of Kupyansk itself was partly retaken by Ukraine and then threatened again in 2023. It sits in the gray zone of eastern Kharkiv where the front is fluid and the boundary between combat zone and civilian space is nonexistent. Residents who have not evacuated live in a perpetually endangered present — their death is only a matter of geographical bad luck and proximity to the next Russian shell.

That 40-year-old man killed in Hrushivka: I do not know his name. It is not mentioned in the dispatches. He has become a statistic — one unit among the five deaths of that night of June 22. But he had a life. Perhaps a family. Perhaps children. This depersonalization of war victims is one of the most dangerous mechanisms of collective habituation to violence: when we stop seeing the individuals behind the numbers, we begin to accept the numbers.

Zaporizhzhia: 1,050 strikes in one day, 7 wounded

The figure of 1,050 strikes: understanding the scale

In Zaporizhzhia oblast, Russian forces conducted 1,050 strikes against 56 settlements on June 22, 2026. That astronomical figure requires unpacking. It includes all aerial attacks — bombs, missiles, drones of various types — artillery fire, MLRS (multiple-launch rocket systems), and FPV drones. Regional authorities received 169 damage reports on housing, vehicles, and infrastructure. The human toll for that day: zero dead and seven wounded — a statistical miracle given the strike intensity, likely due to prior evacuations and the shelter behaviors conditioned by years of daily air alerts.

That figure of 1,050 strikes in one day must be read against the war's broader data. In March 2026, Russia set a record of 7,987 guided bombs dropped on Ukraine in a single month. In one week of June, Ukraine absorbed 2,200 attack drones, more than 1,800 guided bombs, and 87 missiles of various types. The industrial intensity of this bombing campaign has no equivalent in Europe since the Second World War.

The impossibility of protecting every settlement

With 56 settlements struck in a single oblast in a single day, Ukrainian air defenses face an impossible equation. Even with the Patriot, NASAMS, HAWK, and other systems provided by Western partners, it is materially impossible to cover every village, every road, every field. Long-range intercept systems are deployed to protect major cities and critical infrastructure. Rural and semi-rural areas remain exposed to short-range FPV drones and artillery that air defense systems are not designed to stop.

That is why Ukraine's repeated requests for more air defense systems are not luxury demands — they are existential. Every additional system covers a wider area, intercepts more projectiles, saves more lives. Every delay in delivering those systems, every political reluctance to supply them, translates directly into additional casualties in the villages of Zaporizhzhia and the five oblasts struck that night.

Dnipropetrovsk: strikes on the agricultural economy

A man wounded in the fields

In Dnipropetrovsk oblast, the night of June 22–23 wounded a 60-year-old man in the Bozhedarivka hromada, Kamianske district. Damage includes residential buildings, farm outbuildings, vehicles, infrastructure, an agricultural enterprise, a fire station, and agricultural machinery. The mention of an agricultural enterprise and farm machinery is not incidental: striking Ukraine's agriculture means striking Ukraine's capacity to feed its citizens, export grain, and fund its defense.

Ukraine is one of the world's breadbaskets. Its agricultural lands in Dnipropetrovsk and across central Ukraine produce millions of tonnes of wheat, corn, sunflowers, and other crops that feed not only Ukrainians but millions of people worldwide. Russian strikes on agricultural machinery and storage facilities are therefore not only war crimes against Ukrainian farmers — they carry implications for global food security.

The Nikopol, Synelnykove, and Kamianske districts

The districts of Nikopol, Synelnykove, Kamianske, and Dnipro were all struck in the night of June 22. The city of Nikopol, across the Dnipro from Russian positions, is among the most regularly bombed areas of Dnipropetrovsk. On June 27, a minibus was struck by a Russian drone in Nikopol, killing two civilians — a double death that illustrates how even daily commutes have become lethally dangerous in that area. Taking a minibus in a city that receives drones on civilian convoys has become an act of courage.

These communities on the western bank of the Dnipro face a form of permanent Russian presence: artillery positions and drones launched from the occupied eastern bank can strike at any moment, day or night. There is no respite, no safe moment, no risk-free zone. In that context, the destruction of a fire station takes on its full symbolic meaning — not only are civilians being killed, but the rescue capacity that would come to help them is being destroyed.

Anti-drone defense: 118 Shahed drones out of 135 shot down

The architecture of Ukrainian air defense

The performance of Ukrainian air defenses in the night of June 22–23 is remarkable on paper: 118 Shahed drones out of 135 intercepted. That intercept rate of over 87 percent is the product of four years spent building a complex layered defense architecture combining systems from different countries and different generations. American Patriots, American-Norwegian NASAMS, German Gepards, modernized HAWKs, upgraded Soviet anti-aircraft guns, electronic jamming systems: all of this functions together in a multi-layer defense network that has improved considerably since 2022.

Russian Shahed-136 drones — initially supplied by Iran, now produced in Russia under the designation Izvestia and derivatives — fly slowly (approximately 185 km/h), at low altitude, with a small radar signature. They are designed to overwhelm defenses through numbers rather than speed or stealth. Ukraine has developed specific tactics to intercept them: anti-drone drones, high-cadence light anti-drone artillery, acoustic and radar detection systems, and defense lasers in certain areas.

The cost of interception: a brutal asymmetry

The economic equation of interception is unfavorable to Ukraine. A Russian Shahed drone costs approximately $20,000 to $50,000 to produce. A Patriot PAC-3 missile costs between $3 and $5 million. Using a Patriot to shoot down a Shahed is economically absurd, but sometimes necessary when the drone is targeting critical infrastructure. Ukraine has been compelled to develop lower-cost solutions — interceptor drones, automatic cannons, electronic jamming — to avoid burning through its stock of expensive missiles on cheap drones. That tactical innovation under constraint is one of the most remarkable features of Ukrainian defense.

The 17 drones that slipped through the defenses that night of June 22 dispersed across the five targeted oblasts, contributing to the documented destruction. Each drone passing through the net represents a disproportionate investment of human resources for recovery, repairs, and medical care. That is the economic reality of anti-drone warfare: even at an 87 percent intercept rate, the total defensive cost remains heavy.

The Russian launch network: Oryol, Kursk, Bryansk

The bases from which drone swarms are launched

The 135 Shahed drones of the night of June 22–23 were launched from bases spread across the Russian oblasts of Oryol, Kursk, and Bryansk, and from the coastal bases of Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Millerovo. That multi-directional launch geography creates defensive complexity for Ukraine: drones arrive from different directions, at staggered times, forcing the defense to cover a 360-degree perimeter rather than a line. Bases in Oryol and Bryansk reach northern and central Ukrainian oblasts. Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Millerovo, in southern Russia, cover the southern oblasts.

Those bases are legitimate targets for Ukrainian strikes — they house the military equipment used to terrorize civilians. Ukraine has conducted several strikes on those facilities since it acquired sufficient long-range munitions. But Russia's launch capacity is such that the partial destruction of certain infrastructure has not significantly reduced the volume of attacks. Shahed drone production in Russia has reached industrial capacities that ensure near-unlimited availability of low-cost munitions.

Iran's role in the Russian arsenal

Shahed drones, initially produced by Iran under the designation Shahed-136, have been supplied to Russia since 2022. Despite official Iranian denials, dozens of technical reports and debris analyses have confirmed their Iranian origin. Since 2023, Russia has developed its own production of these vehicles at factories in Yelabuga and other sites, scaling up in a way that has made Russia progressively less dependent on Iranian deliveries. North Korea also supplies artillery ammunition to Russia — a Russia-Iran-North Korea axis that represents the coalition of authoritarian regimes against Western democracies.

This cooperation between authoritarian regimes has profound implications. Iran received in exchange Russian cooperation on its military programs, notably ballistic missiles. North Korea received Russian military technologies in exchange for its shells. China provides the microelectronic components essential to drone and missile production. This network of mutual support between authoritarian regimes substantially complicates the West's economic pressure strategy — and justifies a coordinated response that reaches far beyond support for Ukraine alone.

The human cost of the invasion: a count that never ends

Since February 24, 2022: an accumulation of grief

Every night like that of June 22–23, 2026 adds its victims to an overall toll that exceeds ordinary human comprehension. Since the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022, tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed. The figures officially documented by the United Nations represent only a fraction of actual deaths — many occupied areas and many victims buried under rubble remain unrecorded. Ukrainian armed forces have sustained between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties (killed, wounded, and missing) according to CSIS estimates. On the Russian side, NATO documents between 1.3 and 1.5 million total casualties — including approximately 500,000 killed.

Those figures are not abstractions. Behind each unit, there is a human life interrupted. A 19-year-old Russian soldier sent to the front by a political machine that treats him as cannon fodder. A 35-year-old Ukrainian soldier defending his home and family. A 61-year-old Ukrainian civilian dying from a drone wound in a Kherson hospital. A 40-year-old man killed in his village in Kharkiv. This daily accumulation of grief, sustained for more than four years, is the true face of what Vladimir Putin chose to inflict on Europe.

The memory of every death

Ukraine maintains a meticulous effort to document its civilian losses. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, Ukrainian atrocity documentation organizations, local journalists who risk their lives to bear witness: all contribute to a collective effort to ensure every death is counted, documented, and named. This work of memory is not only moral — it is legal. That data will be used in proceedings before the International Criminal Court, a future Special Tribunal for Ukraine if one is established, and future reparation claims against Russia. The five dead of the night of June 22 will have their place in those archives — and in the judicial proceedings that history will impose on their killers.

Ukraine holds: military data for late June 2026

241 engagements in 24 hours on June 28

Facing the aerial terror, Ukraine is holding its ground lines. On June 28, 2026, the Ukrainian General Staff reported 241 engagements in the preceding 24 hours. That figure, among the highest since the start of the full-scale war, illustrates the intensity of the ground combat that accompanies the aerial bombing campaign. Despite that pressure, Ukraine is maintaining its positions across most of the front and advancing in certain sectors — notably around Zaporizhzhia and in the Borova sector, as documented by the Institute for the Study of War.

Alongside defensive combat, Ukraine is conducting offensive operations on Russian territory: strikes on refineries, the Crimea blockade, strikes on satellite communication centers at Dubna and Vladimir. That defense-offense combination is the signature of Ukraine's 2026 strategy: hold on the ground while attriting Russia's economy and military infrastructure. It is a strategy demanding in human and material resources that can only be sustained with constant Western support.

Russian losses: a recruitment model barely viable

According to the senior NATO official who testified on June 23, 2026, Russian new recruits have recently fallen below the monthly loss rate — meaning Russia is losing soldiers faster than it can recruit them. That tipping point, if confirmed, represents a fundamental shift in the war's dynamics. 30,000 to 35,000 losses per month against recruitment struggling to keep pace: Russia is using forced retention measures (extended contracts), $80,000 recruitment bonuses, prison recruitment, and recruitment in Africa and Central Asia. Those stopgap measures cannot durably compensate for a structural personnel deficit.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated publicly that Russia loses more personnel in a single month than the USSR lost in ten years of war in Afghanistan. That is a formulation that should ring as an alarm across Russian public opinion — but in a society where information is state-controlled, that data does not reach those it should address.

The NATO Ankara summit: decisions with concrete consequences

70 billion euros on the table while bombs fall

The NATO summit scheduled in Ankara in late June 2026 is debating an aid package of 70 billion euros for Ukraine. The United States under Trump would not contribute — but European and Canadian allies would carry most of the effort. That numbers debate seems abstract from Western capitals. From the five oblasts struck in the night of June 22, it has an immediate, concrete translation: every billion euros of aid equals air defense systems, anti-drone munitions, armored vehicles, medical equipment. Less aid means more civilian deaths.

Robert Fico's Slovakia announced it would arrive at the summit with no mandate to approve military loans or financial contributions. That is an isolated but symbolically significant position — it is a reminder that NATO solidarity with Ukraine is not unanimous, that fractures exist, that Alliance cohesion is a fragile asset that must be actively defended. While Fico speaks of "funding the war", the families of the five dead of June 22 are burying their loved ones.

Trump, NATO, and Ukraine: the pragmatism of a necessary evil

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has profoundly changed the landscape of American support for Ukraine. The United States has substantially reduced its direct aid. But Trump maintains American membership in NATO and has not officially withdrawn diplomatic support from Ukraine. That is the necessary evil of contemporary geopolitics: a Trumpian America that has not disappeared from the Alliance but no longer carries it singlehandedly. Europe must learn to fill that gap — and the 70 billion euros being discussed at Ankara is precisely that European attempt to shoulder more of the collective strategic burden.

For Ukraine, that American repositioning is painful but manageable — if and only if Europe holds the relay. The signal that European allies send from their debates at Ankara has direct strategic value: it tells Kyiv that Western support is durable, that resistance has meaning. And it tells Moscow that NATO is not on the verge of abandoning Ukraine despite the American repositioning.

Ukrainian society facing the daily ordeal

Resilience and reconstruction in the oblasts under attack

Behind the numbers of the night of June 22, there are maintenance teams repairing the damaged power lines in Kherson by the following morning. Doctors in Kharkiv operating on the wounded through air raid alerts. Residents of Zaporizhzhia clearing debris from their damaged apartment buildings and filing the official paperwork to obtain compensation. This daily heroism, invisible in international dispatches, is the real fabric of Ukrainian resistance.

Ukraine has developed since 2022 a remarkably effective response infrastructure for bombardments. Its early warning systems are among the most sophisticated in the world. Evacuation protocols for high-risk zones, reinforced shelters, volunteer networks for emergency humanitarian aid: all of this was built under fire, with available means, often without pre-existing models. It is a society learning to live in wartime while dreaming of peace.

The invisible psychological cost

Beyond material destruction and physical casualties, the war inflicts on Ukrainian society an immense and cumulative psychological cost. Four years of daily air alerts, interrupted nights, constant fear for loved ones at the front, news of deaths and wounds: those foundational experiences will mark an entire generation of Ukrainians. Studies on mental health conducted in Ukraine document massive prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety, particularly among children and the families of combatants.

That psychological cost will reverberate through Ukraine for decades after the war ends. Physical reconstruction — buildings, infrastructure, industry — could take ten or twenty years. The psychological reconstruction of a society that has lived for four years under constant bombardment may take an entire generation. That is one of the least visible and most lasting dimensions of Putin's crime against Ukraine.

What this night reveals about the nature of Russia's war

Terrorism raised to a state doctrine

The night of June 22–23, 2026 is not an exception in the Ukrainian-Russian war — it is the rule. Simultaneous strikes across multiple oblasts, targeting civilian areas, using a combination of drones, missiles, and guided bombs to maximize dispersion and saturate defenses: that is Russia's standard war doctrine since 2022. It does not aim to achieve specific military objectives — it aims to terrorize, to exhaust, to fracture the will to resist of Ukrainian society. In that sense, it is large-scale, documented, repetitive state terrorism.

That finding has clear legal implications. The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin for the deportation of Ukrainian children. Strikes on civilian areas documented as deliberate by Ukrainian intelligence constitute additional violations of international humanitarian law. The construction of a legal case against those responsible for this terror campaign is underway — and the night of June 22, with its five dead and twenty-nine wounded documented across five oblasts, is part of that record.

The international community must name what it sees

There is a gap between what the facts show and what international diplomacy dares to name. The objective data — deliberate strikes on civilians, use of residential areas as targets, Ukrainian intelligence documentation of explicit orders to target civilian populations — corresponds to the legal definition of terrorism and war crimes. International diplomacy, out of caution or interest, hesitates to use those terms as forcefully as the facts would warrant. That normalizing hesitation is itself a moral and strategic problem.

The West that supports Ukraine must fully assume the implications of that support: if Russian actions are war crimes — and they are — then helping to stop them is a moral obligation, not only a geopolitical calculation. That moral clarity is also strategic clarity: it gives the Ukrainian cause the universal legitimacy it deserves, and it further isolates Russia in international institutions.

Moscow's choice: systematizing terror as military strategy

A doctrine confirmed by trajectories and targets

The strikes of June 22–23, 2026 are not an operational accident. They fit into a pattern documented for two years: simultaneously attacking several regions in the same night to saturate air defense systems and maximize civilian casualties. Five oblasts hit in one night is deliberate military coordination, not overflow. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense precisely documented the drone origins — Oryol, Kursk, Bryansk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Millerovo — revealing a centralized and planned logistics operation.

What this night reveals is that Vladimir Putin's Russia has consciously made Ukrainian civilians a permanent strategic target. The villages of Kherson struck by artillery threaten no one militarily. The children wounded in Zaporizhzhia represent no military asset. Those strikes serve a single objective: exhaust Ukrainian resilience, force displacement, empty the territories Moscow wants to reoccupy.

Persistence as Ukraine's response

Ukraine's answer to that strategy of attrition is not despair. It is documented, measured, declared persistence. Every night where 118 Shahed drones out of 135 are shot down, Ukraine demonstrates that Russian saturation has limits. Every communiqué from the governors of Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, naming victims by their home city, resists the fog of war that Moscow sustains. That meticulous accounting is itself a form of resistance — refusing anonymity to the victims means refusing the logic that designated them.

For Ukraine, holding against systematic terror is not a rhetorical posture. It is the result of an air defense infrastructure rebuilt after every strike, of Western partners maintaining deliveries of Patriot, IRIS-T, and NASAMS systems, and of a population that has not yielded after more than four years of full-scale invasion. That collective refusal to break is the most factual response to Russia's terror strategy.

Conclusion: five dead, one night, and Ukraine's long patience

What the night of June 22 demands of us

The night of June 22–23, 2026 — five dead, twenty-nine wounded, five oblasts, 118 drones shot down — is an ordinary night in the extraordinary war that Ukraine has endured for more than four years. That ordinariness is the deepest scandal: that it has become normal, that Western capitals have absorbed it into their cognitive background noise, is the partial victory of Putin's exhaustion strategy. Refusing that normalization, keeping indignation alive, demanding proportionate responses: that is the minimum the editorial form can do.

Ukraine needs more air defense systems. It needs the NATO 70-billion-euro package to be approved at Ankara without being gutted by Fico's reluctance or anyone else's. It needs sanctions against Russia to be maintained and tightened — and the one-year extension decided on June 25, 2026 is a good signal. It needs, above all, that the West not let itself be anesthetized by the repetition of the same horrors.

Ukraine's long patience

Ukraine is holding. It is advancing in some sectors, defending in others, striking deep into Russian territory, maintaining its economy, training new soldiers, manufacturing new drones. It is asking its partners to be equal to the situation — no more, no less. That long Ukrainian patience, maintained for more than four years against daily terror, is perhaps the most impressive thing to witness in this war. It deserves to be honored — not only with declarations, but with actions: weapons delivered, sanctions upheld, constant diplomatic presence.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My position and biases in this editorial

I am clearly and openly pro-Ukrainian. I believe that the war Russia is waging against Ukraine is an unjustifiable act of aggression that constitutes war crimes. That moral positioning shapes my editorial framing — I am not neutral in the face of civilian deaths, and I make no pretense of being so. My primary sources for this editorial are Ukrainska Pravda, the Kyiv Independent, Militarnyi, and Al Jazeera. The data on Russian casualties comes from an anonymous NATO source via the UK Defence Journal — a traceability limit I flag.

What I don't know and the uncertainties of this editorial

Real-time casualty figures are often provisional and subject to revision. The death toll for the night of June 22 may have been amended since my sources were published. The NATO Russian casualty data (1.3 to 1.5 million) are estimates — the actual figures cannot be independently verified. I do not claim to know with certainty what is happening militarily across the entire front — I rely on publicly available sources. This editorial is a journalistic document, not an intelligence report.

Sources

Primary sources

Ukrainska Pravda — Russians attack five Ukrainian oblasts, killing 5 and injuring 29 — 2026-06-23

Militarnyi — Senior NATO Official: Russia's Total Casualties Have Reached 1.3–1.5 Million — 2026-06-23

Kyiv Independent — Russian attacks kill 7, injure 89 across Ukraine, drone strike hits minibus in Nikopol — 2026-06-27

Secondary sources

Al Jazeera — Three killed as Ukraine and Russia trade attacks overnight — 2026-06-27

Ukrainska Pravda — Battlefield sees 241 clashes over past day — Ukraine's General Staff — 2026-06-28

Kyiv Independent — General Staff: Russia has lost 1,395,790 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022 — 2026-06-24

CSIS — Russia's Grinding War in Ukraine, 1.2 million casualties analysis — 2026-01-27

United 24 Media — Russia's War Toll Hits Up to 1.4 Million Casualties, NATO Says — 2026-06-17