Victory Chronicles
-DAY 464

Above: Fighters of the Russian Volunteer Corps (РДК). Incursions into Belgorod continue to excite social media and flummox Russian propagandists. We know that they are caught off guard when they can’t get their propaganda story straight, much less their defense response. Oblast officials claim they are carrying out orderly evacuations, while locals say no one is helping them flee. Oblast officials claim Ukraine is shelling towns in the border region while anti-Putin forces say Russia is shelling its own places out of panic. (UkrInform)

• Latvia has given Ukraine sixty-six vehicles confiscated from drunk drivers. Latvia has long had a law that allowed for confiscation of vehicles in some drunk driving cases, but changed the law in February to provide the vehicles to Ukraine if they are used in emergency situations related to invader hostilities. 
• A NATO coalition of the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and the US are training Ukrainian pilots for advanced aircraft expected to show up in Ukraine in late fall 2023. Kyiv hopes to receive between 40 and 50 F-16 jets to establish three to four squadrons. The Ukrainian Air Force said that due to high battlefield demands, it is hard to train significant numbers of Ukrainian pilots on advanced NATO aircraft.  “We must remain engaged in combat here, but it is equally vital to enhance our training capabilities abroad. As a result, we have devised a rotational training program that will send pilots in waves.” Pilots with English language skills are first in the queue. 
• An agreement on Sweden joining NATO could be reached in time for a summit of the alliance next month in Lithuania, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg said on Sunday after meeting Turkish President Erdoğan. Officials from Turkey, Sweden and Finland would meet later this month for talks to try to overcome objections from Turkey and Hungary that have delayed Sweden’s NATO membership.
• The European Investment Bank will grant Ukrzaliznytsia EUR 6.7 million to help keep the trains running during the war. The grant will cover urgent needs, especially in the evacuation of people from conflict zones. 
• The Russian MoD submitted a draft decree that allows it to virtually enroll people into the Russian military without their presence. The draft decree states that the MoD will be able to register citizens for military service in absentia on the basis of information in a virtual database. Russian citizens will receive virtual notifications on their personal accounts about their draft status. 

Above: Defense Express

Above: Air Force of Ukraine daily report. On the night of June 5 to 6, DESTROYED: (4) cruise missiles Kh-1.1/Kh-555; (3) Shahid-136/131 strike drones.

Above: Ukrainian General Staff of the Armed Forces estimated enemy losses since February 24, 2022, with daily additions. 

ITEM	QTY	▲
Liquidated personnel	210350	+410
Tanks	3848	+11
Armored personnel vehicles	7523	+11
Artillery systems/ MLRS	3567/584	+12/1
Anti-aircraft systems	349	+5
Aircraft/ helicopters	313/298
Unmanned aerial vehicles	3189	+14
Cruise missiles	1136	+4
Warships/ boats	18
Vehicles and fuel tanks	6312	+7
Special equipment	484	+5

 

Above:  Radio Svoboda

• The enemy attacked Kyiv on Trinity Day, Sunday, with cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea region and Shahed drones. The Kyiv City Military Administration reported that Ukraine shot down everything on a distant approach so that “for the second night, Kyiv people didn’t hear explosions overhead.” 
• On Sunday, the occupiers shelled Sumy Oblast 22 times resulting in injuries and destruction of civilian infrastructure. 
• On Sunday, Russian forces launched an air-to-surface missile attack on Chuhiiv, Kharkiv. No injuries reported. Mortars rained on a housing district in Bohodukhiv, Kharkiv, killing civilians on Saturday. 
• Dnipro City was hit hard on Saturday and Sunday, resulting in multiple civilian injuries and deaths. Southern Command reported shooting down two cruise missiles and multiple Shahed drones. The invaders sent heavy artillery into Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk, overnight on Sunday. 
• Two people died in Zaporizhzhia Oblast on Sunday when the invaders shelled Komyshuvakha village.
• Kherson Oblast was hit with at least 287 shells on Sunday including 39 hitting the oblast capital.  No casualties reported. 

Above: Kharkiv unveiled a monument to children killed in war. First Lady Zelenska took part in the opening ceremony on Saturday. “It is difficult to open monuments to the dead, especially when those dead are children. This pain is unfathomable. We are here to share this pain and bear witness to it,” said the eloquent first lady. (Interfax)

Above: The Polish Volunteer Corps released a photo of their volunteers supporting the raids into Russian territory. Not affiliated with the government of Poland, PVC announced that it is providing logistical and medical support to the anti-Putin forces and is operating only in Ukrainian territory. (Polski Korpus Ochotniszy)

• Russian officials continue to use rest and rehabilitation schemes to deport Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Russia. The so-called “LNR” sources reported that the “Helping Ours” volunteer organization has sent 67 children and 36 mothers from occupied Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts to the Klyazma sanatorium in Moscow Oblast with plans to send another 162 people, primarily children ages five to 13, to the sanatorium by the end of 2023. A Russian news aggregator reported on June 3 that children’s health camps in Bryansk Oblast will take 750 children from Bryanka, Luhansk Oblast.
• The Free Russia Legion claimed to have taken prisoners in a weekend assault on Belgorod, Russia, whom they will turn over to Ukraine for the exchange pool. At first, anti-Putin forces invited the Belgorod governor to meet them for an exchange, which he agreed to, but then didn’t show up. Anti-Putin forces then posted a video of the sad POWs, calling the governor an elitist coward. The Wagner prima donna quickly chimed in, offering to mediate. The Chechen warlord offered to send his troops – recently reassigned to the Bakhmut front – to deal with the cross-border incursions. Angry Patriot Girkin blasted that Bilhorod is helpless unless forces on the Ukraine front are diverted for its defense. 
• Russian forces are attempting to regain the initiative on the Kupiansk- Svatove- Kreminna line and are reinforcing their troops along the Luhansk-Kharkiv frontline. Russian forces are attempting to restart their offensive operations near Masyutivka (13km northeast of Kupiansk), Novoselivske and Kuzemivka (16km northwest of Svatove), Makiivka (23km northwest of Kreminna), Bilohorivka (13km south of Kreminna), and Spirne (27km south of Kreminna). Russian forces are reinforcing their positions with “Storm Z” assault units that are staffed with “specially-trained” convicts.  The General Staff reported the arrival of 500 prisoner-soldiers to the Kharkiv front last week,  “…about 100 people from among the newly arrived reinforcements suffered injuries of varying degrees of severity, in particular, injuries that were not compatible with life. Also, after this event, about 80 people voluntarily left their positions.”  
• Ukrainian and Russian forces both claimed to have made limited territorial gains on the Kupiansk-Svatove line on June 4. Ukrainian forces successfully advanced 400 meters in an unspecified area on the Svatove front and liberated a significant area of the Ivanivske forest. 
• Russian forces continued offensive operations south of Kreminna on June 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Bilohorivka and Spirne.

Above:  Ukrainian defender wearing Georgian flag patch in the trenches near Bakhmut. (National Review)

• Commander of ground forces General Syrskyi said that the situation in the east is more complicated.  As on the Kharkiv front, the enemy is reinforcing Donetsk with “Storm Z” assault groups of “specially-trained” prisoners and is trying to launch offensives along the eastern Donetsk front. 
• Russia is fighting a tough propaganda war on its western front, claiming to have killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops and destroyed sixteen tanks in a “large-scale offensive on five sectors in the south Donetsk region”. They claimed that the invader-general in charge of the Ukraine war visited the frontlines on Saturday. 
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks around Bakhmut on June 4. Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Ivanivske and Bila Hora (12km southwest of Bakhmut). Wagner forces continue to withdraw from Bakhmut, replaced with Russian airborne forces.
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks near Marinka on June 4. Ukrainian forces repelled all Russian ground attacks near Marinka. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Chechen “Akhmat” Special Forces continue offensive operations on the Marinka front.

Above: Mykolaiv joined with the Children’s Voices campaign on Sunday to remember Ukraine’s fallen children. A mural was painted at the site of a child’s death from Russian shelling. (Mykolaiv ODA)

• Ukraine’s nuclear regulation agency informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that the invaders have turned off the transmission of information from the Automated System for Monitoring Radiation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Ukraine has information that the military occupants of the plant may be looting security system equipment, completely degrading the emergency alerts system. 
• Ukrainian sources report that as a result of “constant cotton” in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia region, occupation authorities are accelerating their looting program and fleeing the area in fear of a “Kharkiv scenario” when Ukrainian forces swept Kharkiv Oblast last fall. Occupation authorities are “accompanying their relatives who are evacuating”, but are not returning to their occupational duties. 
• Ukrainian forces continued to target enemy assets in southern Ukraine. Russian sources claimed that Russian air defenses intercepted Ukrainian missiles targeting Berdiansk and Melitopol on June 3 and that Ukrainian forces struck additional areas near Melitopol, northeast of Melitopol near Chernihivka, and near the frontline near Verbove and Polohy. 

Crimean occupiers claimed that Russian air defenses and electronic warfare systems destroyed or disabled nine Ukrainian UAVs targeting Dzhankoy, Crimea, on June 3.