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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) Ukrainian air defenses downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia early Tuesday, most of them in the Kyiv region, officials said, in a bombardment that exposed gaps in the countrys air protection after almost 16 months of war.

Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a nighttime drone attack lasting around three hours, officials said, but Ukrainian air defenses in the area shot down about two dozen of them.

The attack was part of a wider bombardment of Ukrainian regions that extended as far as the Lviv region in the west of the country, near Poland.

The Shahed drones made it all the way to Lviv because of the inability of air defense assets to cover such a broad area, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said.

Air defense systems are mostly dedicated to protecting major cities, key infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power plants, and the front line, he said.

There is a general lack of air defense assets to cover a country like Ukraine with a dome like Israel has, he said, in a reference to Israels Iron Dome aerial defense system.

In the Lviv region, the Russian strike hit a critical infrastructure facility, starting a fire, according to Lviv Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi.

Russia also struck the southern Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine with ballistic missiles.

Ukraines air defenses have been reinforced with sophisticated weapons from its Western allies, allowing it a higher success rate recently against incoming drones and missiles.

Previously, a winter bombardment by Russia damaged Ukraines power supply, though speedy repairs blunted that Kremlin effort.

The latest aerial assaults behind Ukraines front line coincided with the early stages of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, as it aims to dislodge the Kremlins forces from territory occupied since Russias full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The counteroffensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraines armed forces.

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Russia has also mustered a large number of reserves, he said in a post accompanying a video of him visiting front-line positions with other senior officers.

Heavy battles are taking place in eastern Ukraine, around Bakhmut, Lyman, Avdiivka and Marinka, the Ukrainian armed forces said. Russia shelled 15 cities and villages in the eastern Donetsk region, wounding five civilians, including three in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut, according to Ukraines presidential office.

Despite the fierce resistance of the occupiers, our soldiers are doing everything possible to liberate Ukrainian territory. The operation continues as planned, Zaluzhnyis post said.

In other developments, Russias Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its acronym SVR, invited Ukrainian diplomats stationed abroad to come to Russia with their families to avoid returning to Ukraine. It claimed many Ukrainian diplomats are unwilling to return home after their tours and want refugee status in the European Union and Asian countries where they worked.

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

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Ukraine downs Russian drones but some get through due to gaps in air protection - Yahoo News

Russian occupier Tekhov Aivengo was killed during the fighting for the village of Pyatykhatky

During the fighting for the village of Pyatykhatky in Zaporizhzhya Oblast, a deputy battalion commander from South Ossetia and several hundred other Russian troops were killed, Russian propagandist Telegram channels reported on June 18.

The deputy commander killed was said to be from the Storm Ossetiabattalion, and was named Tekhov Aivengo.

He was allegedly surrounded along with his battalion, and about 300Russian soldiers were killed.

The propagandists write that this unit had allegedly "decided to stand tothe end."

On June 19, Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Hanna Malyarconfirmed that the Ukrainian military had liberated the village ofPyatykhatky in Zaporizhzhya Oblast.

Read also: Ukrainian military shows liberated Blahodatne in Donetsk Oblast video

In total, during the two weeks of the offensive in the Berdyansk andMelitopol sectors of the front, the Tavria grouping units have de-occupiedeight settlements:

Novodarivka,

Levadne,

Storozheve,

Makarivka,

Blahodatne,

Lobkove,

Neskuchne,

Pyatykhatky.

Read also: Details of the storming and successful liberation of Neskuchne - an interview with a soldier

Units in the Tauride sector advanced into enemy territory up to 7kilometers. The area liberated on the southern front amounts to 113square kilometers.

On June 15, Malyar reported that the offensive continues in severaldirections as the Ukrainian Armed Forces are gradually but surelyadvancing and inflicting significant losses on the enemy.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, saidUkraine's counter-offensive to retake Russian-held territory would bedifficult and involve fierce fighting.

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Deputy commander and entire battalion of Russian troops from South Ossetia killed in south Ukraine - Yahoo News

In some of the most intense footage we have seen since Russia began its all-out invasion of Ukraine 16 months ago, a team from the Ukrainian 73rd Naval Special Operations Center (NSOC) is seen wiping out Russian troops in a trench somewhere on the southern front of the ongoing counteroffensive.

The video shows combat strikingly reminiscent of the brutal close-quarters fighting that took place in the trenches of France during WWI. The video looks more like a scene from 1917 then from a modern battlefield. In this 1-minute-57-second video segment, the Ukrainian special operators - roughly equivalent to U.S. Navy SEALs - enter the trench and one by one kill Russian troops as they snake through the labyrinth of tight, blind corners.

Editor's note: the video in this below contains extremely graphic scenes of combat. Viewer discretion is highly advised:

The video, taken by one of the operators wearing a helmet-mounted camera, begins with the 73rd NSOC team approaching the deeply dug trench complex and opening fire while turning left at the entrance. As the team continues a short distance down the trench, a Russian soldier appears from around the corner and is immediately shot dead. He slumps to the ground face down and is shot a few more times to ensure he is no longer a threat.

About 69 seconds into the video, two more Russian soldiers approach the Ukrainians from another section of trench and are also quickly gunned down. Some 10 seconds later, a Ukrainian operator is seen tossing a grenade into the trench network. About 10 seconds after that, another grenade is tossed.

At about 87 seconds into the video, there is a right orange-yellow flash, followed by the sounds of shouting and more gunfire, though what happens next is unclear.

In a post on its Telegram channel Monday where the video first appeared, the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (SSO) claimed the team entered the trench from the rear, surprised its occupants, and killed 10 Russians.

"In the south, during the mission, the operators of the special purpose marine center were able to enter the rear of the enemy," the SSO said on its Telegram channel. "A combat group of SSO soldiers caught the enemy by surprise. Recovering from the surprise, some enemy soldiers tried to resist. But, as you can see from the video shot by one of our soldiers - in vain."

The graphic video underlines the chaotic and brutal nature of warfare the claustrophobic horror of fighting in trenches and the sudden immediacy of death. Though technology has changed greatly since the "Great War" - allowing us rapid access to such scenes, for one - the human element of combat and the horrors that go along with it remains the same.

Yuriy Butusov, editor of the Ukrainian CENSOR.net news outlet who has seen plenty of combat footage, was particularly moved by what he saw in this video.

One of the most stunning close-quarters battles captured on video in the history of modern wars, he said.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

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Horrors Of Trench Warfare Captured In Viral Ukrainian Special Ops Footage - The War Zone

The caskets of Bohdan Didukh and Oleh Didukh, Ukrainian soldiers who shared a last name but were unrelated, are carried out of Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church for their joint funeral on Monday.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

LVIV, Ukraine As the bodies of fallen soldiers steadily fill up a hillside at a military cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the old unmarked graves of those killed in past wars are being exhumed to make way for a seemingly endless stream of dead since Russias invasion of Ukraine.

On Monday afternoon, half a dozen gravediggers took a break in the shade, waiting for the latest coffin they would inter at the Lychakiv Cemetery. Smoking cigarettes and shielding themselves from the sun, they lamented the devastation that Russia had wrought. They said they were bracing for more deaths as fighting grows more intense during Ukraines counteroffensive.

On a sloping hillside, two men who died hundreds of miles apart were buried next to each other. Bohdan Didukh, 34, was killed by a mine last week on the front lines of the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine, where the first stages of Ukraines counteroffensive have begun. Three days later, Oleh Didukh, 52, died of a heart attack while serving in an air defense unit in the relative safety of the countrys west.

On Monday, they were honored side by side in a joint funeral in Lviv. Both of their families were overcome with grief as the soil shoveled on top of the two coffins landed with a succession of thuds. The men, who shared the same last name but never knew each other in life, were united in death in the service of their country.

One of the hard realities of Russias war in Ukraine is that even in a city far from active fighting, such as Lviv, soldiers killed on the front lines over the course of the 15-month-long conflict are returned to their hometowns, sometimes in groups, and laid to rest at the same time. It is seen as an efficient way to get through so many funerals when the dead keep coming.

At the funeral service for the two men in a Greek Catholic church in central Lviv, incense filling the air, the priest said that he had assumed the pair were father and son because of their names and ages. Though their families were not related, they were joined by their pain, he said.

Funerals for fallen soldiers have taken on a grim routine in Lviv. After the church ceremony, the coffins were loaded into vans and driven to the central square where a single trumpeter played. Then the cortege made its way to the graveyard.

Along the route to the cemetery, residents paused to pay their respects. A young girl stood next to her father, a small brown shopping bag in her hand, staring straight ahead as the coffins passed by. Some bystanders fell to their knees.

At the cemetery, Olena Didukh, the wife of Bohdan Didukh, fainted momentarily, overwhelmed by grief and the afternoon sun. Her sister steadied her, wrapping her arm around her back.

Kateryna Havrylenko, 50, who works for the city maintaining the graves, loaded soil onto a wheelbarrow. There are funerals here nearly every day, she said.

With the counteroffensive, many young men and women will be killed, she said. Words cannot express how difficult it is. Very, very difficult. Even though they are strangers, they are someones children, just like I have a child.

At the top of the hillside, city officials have begun exhuming the unmarked graves of soldiers who were buried as long ago as during World War I, young men who died at the start of the last century making way for those who have fallen in this war.

At the start of the war with Russia last year, there was just a small cluster of freshly dug graves on a hillside in one part of the cemetery. Now, nearly 500 soldiers have been buried here in plots filling half the hillside, she said, and more will come.

It is just so hard to think last summer, there were so few. And now there are so many. With a faraway look, she added: And until the war ends, how many more will there be?

Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.

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Ukraine Confirms Another Small Gain in the South - The New York Times

All the latest developments from the war in Ukraine.

"Massive" Russian attacks targeted Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities of Lviv and Zaporizhia overnight from Monday to Tuesday, according to authorities.

Explosive drones attacked Ukraine's capital in waves from multiple directions, wrote the city's military administration on Telegram, adding the alert had lasted more than three hours.

In the western city of Lviv, "critical infrastructure" was hit by drones, said the head of the regional administration, Maksym Kozytskyi.

Meanwhile, authorities in Zaporizhia said the city had been subjected to a "massive attack" aimed at civilian objectives, including residential suburbs.

The Ukrainian General Staff later claimed the country's air defences shot down 28 out of 30 drones launched by Russian forces overnight.

No casualties were immediately reported.

Navalny urges anti-war campaign

Alexei Navalny urged his supporters on Monday to begin a broad campaign against Moscow's actions in Ukraine.

The imprisoned Russian opposition leader made the remarks as he went on trial on new charges of extremism that could keep him behind bars for decades.

Navalny said the anti-war effort must reach out to millions and explain the disastrous impact of the fighting and combat Putin's lies and the Kremlin's hypocrisy.

He argued that despite a relentless crackdown on dissent, such a campaign could be efficiently conducted on messaging apps outside the authorities' control.

No one but us could enter this fight for our citizens' hearts and minds, so we need to do it and win, Navalny said.

Soon after it started, the judge closed the trial despite his demand to keep it open.

In a statement posted on social media by his allies, Navalny declared the decision to close the trial was a sign of fear by President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, who exposed official corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests, was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recovering from nerve agent poisoning in Germany.

'Biggest' counteroffensive blow awaits Russia, says Ukraine

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said the "biggest blow" in Kyiv's military campaign is yet to come, but admitted the operation is difficult, as Russia mounts stiff resistance.

"The ongoing operation has several objectives, and the military is fulfilling these tasks," Maliar wrote on Telegram. "They are moving as they should have been moving. And the biggest blow is yet to come."

After months of acquiring Western weaponry, training and preparations, Ukraine began the first stage of its counteroffensive two weeks ago to reclaim the nearly fifth of its land now occupied by Russia.

"The enemy will not easily give up their positions, and we must prepare ourselves for a tough duel," Maliar said. "In fact, that is what is happening right now,"

The Ukrainian military, which had maintained strict silence about the campaign, has claimed small victories, claiming on Monday it had liberated several small settlements.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said late last week the Ukrainian counteroffensive did not have any meaningful success.

Officials and some Russian military bloggers say Kyiv has made small gains at the expense of huge troop and equipment losses.

Euronews cannot verify these claims.

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Ukraine war: 'Biggest' offensive blow awaits Russia, night attacks, Navalny anti-war campaign - Euronews