Russia launched its largest drone assault on Ukraine since the war began over three years ago, a Ukrainian official said Monday. According to Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, the attack late Sunday involved 355 drones, marking a significant escalation in Moscow’s campaign.
President Donald Trump responded to the assault by saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone “crazy,” pointing to the intensifying strikes as the U.S. attempts to mediate peace in the region.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social Monday morning. “He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”
The Associated Press has more.
The previous night, Russia fired 298 drones and 69 missiles of various types at Ukraine in what Ukrainians said was the largest combined aerial assault during the conflict. From Friday to Sunday, Russia launched around 900 drones at Ukraine, officials said.
The escalation appeared to thwart hopes that Trump’s peace efforts might lead to a breakthrough in the near term, as Putin looks determined to capture more Ukrainian territory and inflict more damage.
Russia has this month broken its record for aerial bombardments of Ukraine three times. The expansion of its air campaign came after Kyiv in March accepted an unconditional 30-day ceasefire proposed by the U.S. but Moscow effectively rejected it.
Russia is also still pushing along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where it has made slow and costly progress, and is assembling its forces for a summer offensive, Ukraine and military analysts say.
Kaja Kallas, the vice-president of the European Commission, called the latest Russian strikes on Kyiv “totally appalling” on Monday, vowing that the bloc would respond with yet another round of sanctions against Moscow. Whether those sanctions will actually change anything remains to be seen—but the EU’s default response of moral condemnation and recycled penalties shows no signs of evolving.
“Only a sense of complete impunity can allow Russia to carry out such attacks and continually escalate their scale,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday. “There is no significant military logic to this, but there is considerable political meaning.”
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Zelensky is once again begging for tighter international sanctions on Russia, claiming that cutting off Moscow’s resources is the only way to stop the war. “Russia’s desire to fight must be deprived of resources,” he said.
Trump also criticized Zelensky for not helping the situation. According to Trump, Zelensky is “doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does.”
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” Trump continued. “This is a War that would never have started if I were President. This is Zelenskyy’s, Putin’s, and Biden’s War, not ‘Trump’s,’ I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires, that have been started through Gross Incompetence and Hatred.”
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