By Rachel Pannett, Annabelle Timsit and Adam Taylor
A previous version of this article included information from a Monday briefing where National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Russia suffered 100,000 casualties, including more than 20,000 killed in action, in Bakhmut since December. NSC deputy spokesman Sean Savett said later Monday that those figure account for all of Russia's losses across Ukraine, not just in Bakhmut, since December. Additionally, a previous version of this article incorrectly stated the day that the White House correspondents’ dinner took place. It was on Saturday night, not Sunday night.
The United States estimates Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties since December, including more than 20,000 killed in action, the National Security Council said Monday. Roughly half of those killed, NSC spokesman John Kirby said, were working with the Wagner mercenary group, often ex-convicts who had been recruited from prison.
The figures were first shared by Kirby on a call with reporters Monday; NSC deputy spokesman Sean Savett said later that the casualty count referred to Russia’s losses across Ukraine since December. The numbers are based on “some information and intelligence that we were able to corroborate over a period of some time,” Kirby said. He declined to discuss Ukrainian casualties. “That’s up to them to speak to,” he said.
Russia targeted Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with a “massive” wave of missiles overnight, Ukrainian officials said. The assault on the capital lasted several hours early Monday, but no casualties were reported, as local authorities said air defenses worked to intercept most of the missiles. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that it carried out strikes against facilities that produce ammunition and weapons for Ukrainian troops. Ukraine said residential areas were hit.
The attack followed a weekend drone strike by Ukrainian forces on an oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea, as Ukraine prepares for an anticipated counteroffensive.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Overnight attacks
Russian strategic bombers launched 18 Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles against Ukraine’s territory in an attack that began around 2:30 a.m. Monday, according to the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. Zaluzhny said the attacks were launched from the Caspian Sea and from the Murmansk region in northwestern Russia. He said that 15 of the missiles were destroyed.
Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the strikes, saying in a statement Monday that its armed forces “carried out a group missile strike with long-range airborne and sea-based high-precision weapons against the facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.”
The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine criticized the overnight attack. Bridget A. Brink tweeted, “Russia again launched missiles in the deep of night at Ukrainian cities where civilians, including children, should be able to sleep safely and peacefully.”
Other key developments
An explosion Monday morning caused a freight train to derail in Bryansk in western Russia, the regional governor said. Alexander Bogomaz said that an “unidentified explosive device” went off around the train tracks near Russia’s border with Ukraine and Belarus. He did not specify who might be responsible. State-owned operator Russian Railways said that “unauthorized persons” illegally interfered with the railway’s operations. The Washington Post couldn’t independently verify the claims.
A power line was blown up in Russia’s Leningrad region early Monday near the border with Estonia and Finland, regional governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said. According to Drozdenko, the power line in the Gatchinskiy district blew up shortly after midnight, and an unidentified object, “presumably an explosive device,” was found on a second power line. He said emergency crews and government investigators were at the scene.
At least 34 people, including five children, were injured in overnight missile strikes against Pavlohrad in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, regional governor Serhii Lysak said. The strikes caused “significant damage” to the energy network infrastructure in Dnipropetrovsk and the Kherson region, leaving thousands of households without power, Ukraine’s energy minister said.
Ukrainian officials said the attack on an oil depot in Sevastopol was part of the buildup to Kyiv’s counteroffensive. Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern command, told local television that undermining Russia’s logistics helps prepare for the “broad full-scale offensive that everyone expects.” Saturday’s strike in Sevastopol, which is home to the Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet, destroyed more than 10 tanks holding some 40,000 tons of oil products intended for the fleet, according to Ukrainian officials.
Global impact
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a “meaningful conversation” with French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, Zelensky’s office said. The leaders discussed French military aid to Ukraine and the upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania, according to a Ukrainian readout of the call. Zelensky has expressed hope that NATO members will agree at the summit to formally invite Ukraine to become a member of the alliance. But leaders of the alliance have avoided giving Kyiv any guarantees on its membership prospects.
Pope Francis said the Vatican is involved in a secret peace mission. “I think peace is always made by opening up channels; it can never be accomplished by closing [doors]. I’m always urging [everyone] to have new rapports, friendly connections,” the pope told reporters on a weekend flight back from a three-day trip to Hungary, according to Italian news agency ANSA.
President Biden said he is “working like hell” to bring home Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night, Biden promised Gershkovich’s family, present in the audience, to work to secure the journalist’s release from prison in Moscow, where the State Department says he is being wrongfully detained on espionage charges. “Evan went to report in Russia to shed light on the darkness that you all escaped from years ago. Absolute courage,” Biden said. “We all stand with you.”
From our correspondents
The rise and violent demise of pro-Russian war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky: The recent killing of a convicted criminal turned popular pro-Russian blogger in an explosion in St. Petersburg underscored the role of a new cadre of propagandists in the vanguard of the Kremlin’s info wars, reports The Post’s Francesca Ebel.
Before his death, Tatarsky had become so well known that he received an invitation to the Kremlin when President Vladimir Putin announced his illegal plans last year to annex four regions in southeastern Ukraine. In a live stream from the September event, he proclaimed: “We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone we have to.”
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