Ukraine army chief vows to expand strikes on Russia

KYIV (AFP) — Ukraine’s top military commander vowed to increase the “scale and depth” of strikes on Russia in remarks made public on Sunday.

He said the strikes were proving “effective” and that Kyiv would only attack military targets.

“Of course, we will continue. We will increase the scale and depth,” Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky told reporters, including Agence France-Presse.

His comments came amid a lull in diplomatic efforts to end the three-year-long war. The last direct meeting between the two sides was almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks have been scheduled.

“We will not just sit in defense. Because this brings nothing and eventually leads to the fact that we still retreat, lose people and territories,” Syrsky said.

In wide-ranging remarks, Syrsky also conceded that Russia had some advantages in drone warfare, particularly in making fiber-optic drones which are tethered and difficult to jam.

“Here, unfortunately, they have an advantage in both the number and range of their use,” he said.

He also claimed that Ukraine still held 90 square kilometers of territory in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched an audacious cross-border incursion last August.

“These are our preemptive actions in response to a possible enemy offensive,” he said.

Russia said in April that it had gained full control of the Kursk region and denies that Kyiv has a presence there.

Moscow currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and has claimed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its invasion in 2022 — in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.

Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal to prolong its full-scale offensive on the country and to seize more territory.

Russian bodies

Meanwhile, Kyiv received the bodies of 20 Russian soldiers instead of Ukrainian ones during exchanges of war dead with Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in remarks made public Saturday.

He accused Russia of “not checking” who they were sending, and suggested Moscow might be doing it on purpose to conflate the number of Ukrainian bodies they had.

The repatriation of fallen soldiers and the exchange of prisoners of war has been one of the few areas of cooperation between the warring sides since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow and Kyiv agreed earlier this month during talks in Istanbul to exchange the bodies of 6,000 soldiers each.

“It has already been confirmed during repatriations that the bodies of 20 people handed over to us as our deceased soldiers are Russian,” Zelensky said in remarks released on Saturday.

“Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports,” he added.

An “Israeli mercenary” fighting for Moscow was also among those sent, he said.

Tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed on both sides since the war began. Neither country regularly releases information on military casualties.

Zelensky said there were currently “695,000 Russian troops” on Ukrainian territory.