What was known on 7 June 2022 about the war

What did the picture of the war in Ukraine look like on 7 June 2022? The reports from the preceding days pointed to heavy fighting in the east, continued strikes far from the front and an early debate about how long the war might last.

Fighting in the east

Battles for control of Sievierodonetsk were continuing on 1 June 2022, although the head of the Luhansk regional military administration, Serhiy Haidai, reported that Russian forces already controlled 80% of the territory. On 5 June 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address that he had visited troops on the front line on the border of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, including in Lysychansk and Soledar. He said he was proud of everyone he had met, shaken hands with and supported.

Strikes beyond the front

On 1 June 2022, Russian cruise missiles struck a railway station near the Beskydy tunnel in the Carpathians for the second time, wounding two people. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister, said the strike was meant to stop rail traffic and halt supplies of fuel and weapons from Ukraine's allies.

On 4 June 2022, Zelensky said the All Saints Skete in Sviatohirsk, whose original church dated from 1526, was the latest of 113 churches destroyed by Russian artillery.

Human cost and outlook

On 3 June 2022, the Red Cross said the scale of destruction after only 100 days of war was beyond comprehension. Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, added that a third of the population had been forced to flee in that short period.

On 4 June 2022, Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the GLOBSEC-2022 forum in Bratislava that it was hard to predict when the war would end, but that his optimistic forecast was that it could end by the end of the year.