Zelenskyy Turns to London After Putin Rebuff — Nuclear Strikes Test Ukraine
After Vladimir Putin dismissed a back-channel offer of direct talks that Zelenskyy had passed through oligarch Roman Abramovich, the Ukrainian president flew to London on June 7 for air-defence talks with Starmer, Macron and Merz. The war's nuclear front sharpened: a Russian strike damaged a spent-fuel store about nine miles from Chernobyl, and the Zaporizhzhia plant suffered its 18th total blackout since 2022. Russia hit the Zaporizhzhia region with 967 attacks, killing one and injuring 25, as Ukraine's drone forces claimed 26 targets and more than 2,000 Russian casualties in six days.
Diplomacy and escalation moved in opposite directions over the weekend. The Financial Times reported that Volodymyr Zelenskyy had used the sanctioned Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich to pass Vladimir Putin a message signalling readiness for a direct meeting; Putin rebuffed it on June 5 at an economic forum in St Petersburg, saying he saw "no point" and that the only purpose would be "for the Ukrainians to stop the advance of our armed forces." With the back-channel rejected, Zelenskyy flew to London on June 7 for talks with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, focused on air-defence cooperation, military assistance and security guarantees.
The war's nuclear front grew more dangerous. Overnight on June 6-7 a Russian strike hit the Centralised Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility in Kyiv Oblast, about nine miles from the Chernobyl plant; the site was empty and partially destroyed, with a roughly 40-square-metre fire extinguished within an hour and radiation reported within safe levels. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna condemned the attack as a conscious risk to nuclear safety, and Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged an international response. Separately, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to the grid on June 6 after a 15-hour total blackout -- its 18th complete loss of off-site power since 2022, which IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said underscored the grid's fragility, days after the agency brokered a localised ceasefire to allow repairs.
Russian fire across the south was relentless. Forces carried out 967 attacks on the Zaporizhzhia region in a single day -- 25 airstrikes, 690 drones, 5 MLRS salvoes and 247 artillery strikes -- killing one person and injuring 25, while a glide-bomb strike near a bus stop in Balabyne killed two and wounded five aged 17 to 79. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, more than 20 drone and artillery strikes killed a 40-year-old man in the Nikopol district and injured another in Synelnykove.
Ukraine pressed its long-range campaign in return. The Unmanned Systems Forces, led by Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, reported 1,006 Russian troops killed and 1,090 wounded between June 1 and 6 and said they struck 26 targets overnight on June 7 across occupied Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia and Russia's Bryansk region. Special Operations Forces hit the Semikolodezyanska oil depot and the Feodosia maritime fuel terminal in occupied Crimea, part of a May "middle-strike" campaign that has brought the R-280 supply route to Crimea under sustained fire, and a large-scale drone attack struck St Petersburg, Russia's second city, after which Zelenskyy declared "it is time to end this war."
The economic war over energy deepened. Russia has launched more than 100 strikes on Ukrainian gas infrastructure in 2026, cutting domestic production 15 to 20 percent and leaving a shortfall of up to 2.5 billion cubic metres for winter, even as imports collapsed 28-fold in May to 29 million cubic metres amid high prices and funding shortages. Naftogaz, the state energy company, reported its 2025 profit had fallen six-fold to 5.8 billion hryvnia and is struggling to secure loans as European partners tire of financing gas purchases.