Air raid sirens, curfews - Kyiv's painful new normal
Residents in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv are slowly coming to terms with a painful new normal - air raid sirens that continue to warn of danger, a daily curfew from 11pm to 5am, martial law, rising food prices and crippling petrol shortages - all grim reminders that the war is far from over.
Restaurants, stores, supermarkets and even hair salons have reopened and are attracting more customers now than during the last few weeks, as more people feel safe to venture out.
Residents The Sunday Times spoke to say supermarket shelves are well stocked, mostly with local goods including fresh meats, dairy products and vegetables. The streets are becoming busier as more people return to Kyiv. But there are fewer jobs, and many businesses remain shuttered.
Ukraine says foils bid by Russia to take key Luhansk city
Ukraine said it has recaptured a large chunk of territory in fierce fighting for Sievierodonetsk and foiled an attempt on Friday (June 3) by Russian troops to advance from the devastated eastern industrial city on the 100th day of Moscow's invasion.
Ukraine's defence minister said his soldiers were already training in Europe to operate the new advanced missile systems pledged by the United States and Britain, which Kyiv hopes will help swing the battle in its favour.
A war that Western countries believe Russia planned to win within hours has ground on for more than three months at a cost of thousands of lives and disruption to the global economy.
State media portrays Russia's need for resilience in Nato's 'proxy war'
As the local media tells it: Russia is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against the United States-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).
The state-aligned media highlights the country's military and social resilience in the war, now over a 100 days old, while the non-state media notes the political costs which the war is inflicting on the national fabric.
On May 30, the state-aligned Pravda's military correspondent Alexander Sladkov wrote that the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian military was based on the myth of a weak and unstable Russia. "Therefore, every episode that proves the cohesion of Russian society deals a powerful blow to the ideology of the enemy," he added.
The most significant error in Russia's military campaign is political
It is an immutable lesson of warfare: however carefully and well-constructed, no war plan survives the first contact with battle.
But as the war in Ukraine hit the 100-day mark, the sheer scale of the failure of Russia's plan is by now undeniable. The only question is whether its military is still capable of snatching a modest victory out of what, by any other yardstick, can only be considered a humiliating strategic defeat.
Russia's errors can be divided into two broad categories: wrong assumptions about the purpose of the invasion and shortcomings in the execution of the operation by the military.
