June 1st, 2026

Politics - Budanov: Zelenskyy says end the war as soon as possible 

- Talks continue 

- Another tanker seized

Combat Ops - Another large strike in the works?

- No changes on the ground

Weather

Kharkiv

62 and cloudy. Clearing tonight, mostly sunny tomorrow, then clouding up late tomorrow and mostly cloudy through the weekend, showers possible on Sunday. Daily lows in the 50s, daily highs in the 70s. Winds variable, 5kts.

Melitopol

65 and partly cloudy, gusting to 20. Partly or mostly cloudy through the weekend. Tomorrow morning in the 40s, after that daily lows in the upper 50s, daily highs in the 70s. Winds variable, 5-10kts.

Kyiv

68 and mostly clear. Partly cloudy tomorrow, mostly cloudy for the rest of the week, rain possible Wednesday night and again on the weekend. . Daily lows in the 50s, daily highs around 70. Winds variable 5-10kts.

Politics

President Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff Budanov (and lead negotiator) noted that Zelenskyy has told him to end the war as soon as possible.

"This is the president's instruction – to try to end this war as soon as possible. Preferably before winter. As the head of the President's Office, I will do everything I can to achieve the objective set by the president of Ukraine. It is absolutely correct, timely and well thought out.”

Budanov added that there are: "real signs of a cessation of hostilities.”

Early in May President Putin said he was willing to meet Zelenskyy only if a peace agreement was mostly worked out and they would meet to sign the agreement. Nevertheless, Putin has recently said that "the Ukrainian conflict is moving towards an end.”

In a separate interview, Budanov insisted that talks among the US, Russia and Ukraine continue.

"There is a certain pause in negotiations at the highest level, but at the technical level these negotiations have never stopped. The fact that you've seen prisoner swaps and so on only confirms this.”

“I don't agree with the assessment that these negotiations have stopped.”

The French Navy seized the oil tanker TAGOR in the Atlantic Ocean, some 400 miles west of France.

TAGOR is a 115,000 dead weight ton tanker, and was en route Russia from Egypt. Reporting is fuzzy, as one would expect for sanctioned ship, she was en route either the Baltic or Murmansk, depending on which report you read and in the last three months she has sailed under a Marshall Islands flag, a Cameroon flag and a Madagascar  flag.

Germany transferred a new IRIS-T surface-to-air-missile system to Ukraine. IRIS-T. IRIS-T uses both AMRAAM and ASRAAM missiles (medium and short range air to air missiles) with boosters, to provide an ability to attack targets out to 50 miles and 100,000 feet.

Prescient Zelenskyy reported on his address last night that during ht last week Russia has launched 2,300 strike drones, 1,560 glide bombs and 108 missiles into Ukraine.

Combat Operations

President Zelenskyy is reporting that Russia is preparing another major strike on Kyiv. Presumably there are several fairly accurate indicates of Russian strike preparations so a large strike is likely within the next few days.

Combat operations for the last three days can be summed up with: more of the same.

There were no confirmed changes on the ground along the full length of the front during the last 3 days. Russian elements continue recon probes and infiltration, normally in 3-5 man elements, Ukrainian forces continue to counter-attack also in small elements. Both sides are supported by large numbers of FPV drones and artillery. Both sides continue drone strikes just behind the front lines (most by number within 10-15 miles of the lines, but also deeper strikes), and these strikes continue to make movement to the forward edge difficult and costly.

What is of note however, is that the Russian “infiltrations” are going on in fairly large numbers. For example, on Saturday 5 different elements infiltrated into Kostiantinivka and one or two infiltrations at least were noted at virtually every town along the line.

In air operations both sides continued strikes against the other’s forces and infrastructure. Of note, Ukrainian forces destroyed 2 x TU-142 Bear F aircraft at Taganrog (at the east end of the Sea of Azov). The aircraft were non-operational airframes that had been in long-term storage at Taganrog but were moved in the last several weeks to an auxiliary runway. 

There was another Russian accusation of a Ukrainian drone strike on non-nuclear elements (the turbine hall of the 6th reactor) of the facility on May 30th and 31st. The Ukrainian military has denied the strikes and respond that Russia issues these accusations whenever they expect the IAEA to inspect the facility.

The facility is huge (about 2 x 4 miles), and Ukrainian drones and rockets are normally accurate enough to hit Russian force elements inside the compound without hitting the reactors. The last drone strike near the reactors was in April of 2024 when a drone hit the dome of reactor 6 - but caused no damage to the dome. There have been other strikes inside the overall facility, but away from the reactors.

Economic Reporting

Feb22  Feb9 Mar9 Apr8 May8 May29 Jun1

Brent      94.71   68.57 106.40 91.78 100.50 92.31 94.21

WTI     92.10   64.04 103.60 93.53 94.91 88.23 97.38

NG       3.97      3.20 3.37 2.73 2.79 3.36 3.35

Wheat     8.52  5.29 6.25 5.79 6.14 6.20 6.08

Ruble     85          77.40 78.20 78.54 74.26 71.10 72.07

Hryvnia 28.6 43.03 43.93 43.45 43.90 44.27 44.30

Urals 91.66 56.37 90.97 124.85 92.56 86.38 82.56

ESPO 94.52 59.77 84.99 103.27 105.56 96.70 93.11

Sokol 99.31 62.85 101.55 96.88 95.96 89.94 88.40

Thoughts

The infiltrations may seem insignificant, but, consider Kostiantinivka: there are already multiple Russian elements scattered across eastern and south-western sections of the city, holding onto one or two small buildings, spotting for artillery and drone strikes and engaging Ukrainian elements that remain in, or have pushed back into those sections of the city. These elements infiltrate forward and then dig in and remain, and I get the sense that like teredos digging into a wooden hull, the numbers seem innocuous - until they don’t. At the beginning of 2025 the Russian lines were still well away from Kostiantinivka. By March last year Russian forces had cut the road that connected the city to Pokrovsk. By late spring Russian forces were closing the pocket east of Kostiantinivka, and by June FPV drones were hitting targets inside the city, and the first recon probes pushed into the city in August. 

While the talk is all about the Ukrainian deep drone strikes, and they are of note, the slow (painfully slow) “rock soup” Russian attack is whittling away on Ksotiantinivka, and drone and rocket and glide bomb attacks are ongoing against Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhivka, the other three cities in the Ukrainian fortress belt. As with Pokrovsk, the Russians probably will need a great deal of time if they are ever to capture the cities. But the value of the cities to Ukraine is reduced to a holding ground.

Meanwhile the casualties continue on both sides - at roughly equal; numbers.

And it seems that virtually every day there is another oblast or two that goes through a 12 - 24 hour (sometime longer) power outage. 

And, while the instructions from Zelenskyy to Budanov may be political theater, I wonder how much resilience is left in the electricity - heat - water infrastructure? Power outages in spring can be unpleasant. But another winter might be a much tougher situation than the horrible winter they just went through. 

 

v/r pete