Russia may have lost more than 70% of its combat-ready Tu-22M3 bombers since 2022.
Around 33–34 were combat-ready before the full-scale invasion. Today, only 9–10 may remain operational.
Operation Spiderweb destroyed 12 Tu-22M3 in June 2025. — U24.
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Operation Spiderweb destroyed 12 Tu-22M3 bombers at Olenya, Belaya and Dyagilevo airbases in June 2025.
Three more crashed in the Irkutsk region alone — in 2024, 2025, and now June 2026. In total, Russia may have lost or had damaged 24 of these bombers since 2022.
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Russia stopped producing the Tu-22 in any variant in 1993. No replacement program exists.
The spare parts base is so limited that even minor damage can lead to an aircraft being written off or cannibalized for parts.
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Timothy Snyder: The memory war is far more comfortable for Polish politicians than the real one.
They get to say: we're right, we're innocent. I know the history. But you start with what's happening now, not memory. Skip that, and you start from a falsehood.
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Snyder: Treat Ukrainians as partners and allies — even when they make mistakes.
Remember that every day they lose people in this war, partly so that Poland can keep living normally.
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Snyder: Judging Zelenskyy's decision to name a unit after UPA without the context of nearly four and a half years of war would be a mistake.
This is the longest war of this century, longer than World War I — it stirs emotions the West struggles to understand.
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Putin says Ukraine must give up Zaporizhzhia region.
DeepState: Russia controls slightly more than 2/3 of the region.
But on the strategically important Orikhiv axis, Russian forces have had no major success since April, — Babel. 1/
Russian forces are about 20 km from Zaporizhzhia in some areas of the front.
They launch over 800 strikes on the city every day, mostly with FPV drones. Their closest positions are now from the Stepnohirsk direction.
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Russia wants to capture Stepnohirsk by the end of June.
It is bringing in manpower, forming assault groups, and using guided aerial bombs. But its assault groups still cannot fully entrench there.
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Holger Neumann, chief of the German air force: We are ready to fight Russia tonight if Moscow attacks any NATO ally.
We will go in with everything we have, in the air force and across NATO, to defend our country, our population, and our alliance — The Telegraph. 1/
Neumann: It must be clear, there are no zones of different security. NATO is NATO, down to the last inch.
We have to make a very strong effort to over watch and, if required, act along certain regions. 2/
Neumann named the regions NATO would strike back. Kaliningrad, St Petersburg, the Kola Peninsula where Moscow is massing nuclear weapons, and the Black Sea fleet.
Any defensive response would amount to "32 against X" — the alliance's 32 air forces against one. 3/
Ukraine is sealing Crimea off from land and sea. In mid-June, drones struck the bridges at Chonhar, Henichesk, Myrne, and Armyansk, the links to the mainland.
Robert Brovdi, commander of Unmanned Systems Forces: “Ukraine will fully isolate it soon”— United24. 1/
Ukraine is closing the sea routes too. Naval drones wait around Crimea, block shipping, and have hit several ferries. Some now launch their own drones and strike aerial targets.
The fuel shortage runs so deep that Russian mobile teams lack the petrol to hunt those drones. 2/
In May, Ukraine set the summer plan, a logistics lockdown that cuts Russian supply lines to seize the initiative on the battlefield.
Middle Strike drones reach Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, with Crimea at the center. 3/
A Russian soldier kept Sofia, Ukrainian, for over a year as a sex prisoner — holding her in a flat with bars on the balcony, boarded-up windows, locked doors, and padlocks.
He took her phone, left food, and returned there only to rape her — The Times. 1/
She was 21. She lived with her disabled mother and two younger brothers in a village in Kharkiv region. When Russian troops occupied it, one soldier began harassing her. She refused. 2/
One day he came armed, with two other soldiers.
“Do you want your family to be dead?”
Then he took her to a nearby building and raped her, according to investigators. It happened again and again. 3/