Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine in a single day since the war began more than three years ago when, the Ukrainian Air Force said Wednesday. In a statement, the air force said Russia fired 728 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as 13 missiles, overnight.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post most of the Russian drones were taken down by Ukrainian interceptor drones, but some of the weapons did get through air defenses. Ukrainian prosecutors were quoted by the French news agency AFP as saying five civilians were killed by drones that slammed into private vehicles in the far eastern town of Rodynske, while three more people were killed about 10 minutes later in Kostiantynivka, around which Russian forces have been closing in.
Officials said two people were also wounded in the Kyiv region during the attack. Zelenskyy said the main target of the Russian attacks, however, was the northwestern city of Lutsk, which sits near the Ukrainian border with Poland and Belarus and is home to airfields used by the Ukrainian army.
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Zelenskyy said the attack, “comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all.”
The massive Russian strike came a day after President Trump pledged to send more weapons to Ukraine and directly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I’m not happy with Putin, I can tell you that much right now, because he’s killing a lot of people,” Mr. Trump said during a Tuesday cabinet meeting at the White House.
The vow to increase weapons deliveries to Ukraine came just days after the Pentagon announced it would pause delivery of some shipments of weapons to Ukraine, citing concerns over dwindling American stockpiles.
“We get a lot of b******* thrown at us by Putin,” Mr. Trump added on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
When asked about the criticism, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Moscow was, “quite calm about this,” according to the Reuters news agency.
In a social media post, Zelenskyy said the huge Russian attack was “yet another proof” of the need for more economic sanctions against Russia.
The latest Russian attack came as Zelenskyy was due to meet with Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg in Italy, ahead of a Ukraine Recovery Conference starting Thursday in Rome, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
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Zelenskyy was also to meet for the second time with Pope Leo XIV, and with other European leaders, as he seeks to persuade his international partners to increase both pressure on Russia, and support for Ukraine.
The conference will see European political and business leaders gather to discuss ways to boost investment for the reconstruction of war-torn Ukraine.
