Russia during the night launched the largest drone attack on Ukraine During the war of more than three years, a Ukrainian official said on Monday. President Donald Trump said Russian chief Vladimir Putin had become “crazy” by intensifying Ukraine’s bombing when the United States tried to negotiate peace.
The Russian bombing on Sunday evening included 355 drones, the head of the Ukrainian Air Force communications department told the Associated Press.
The previous night, Russia Pulled 298 drones and 69 missiles of various types in Ukraine in what the Ukrainians said they were the largest aerial assault combined during the conflict. From Friday to Sunday, Russia launched around 900 drones in Ukraine, officials said.
Climbing seemed to thwart the hope that Trump’s peace efforts could lead to a short -term breakthrough, because Putin seems determined to capture more Ukrainian territory and inflict more damage.
Russia broke its record for aerial bombardment three times this month. The expansion of its air campaign intervened after kyiv in March accepted an unconditional 30-day cease-fire proposed by the United States, but Moscow actually rejected it.
Russia also pushes the front line of around 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), where it has made slow and expensive progress, and assembles its forces for a summer offensive, Ukraine and military analysts.
“Only a feeling of total impunity can allow Russia to carry out such attacks and continually degenerate their scale,” Ukraine President Volodyr Zelenskyy on Telegram wrote Monday. “There is no important military logic for this, but there is a considerable political meaning.”
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He repeated his call for more stringent international economic sanctions against Russia as a means of ending war, because the “desire to fight Russia must be deprived of resources”.
The first diplomat of the European Union, the leader of foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, described on Monday the last attacks on kyiv as “completely appalling” and said that the block intended to impose more sanctions on Russia.
Trump has also threatened massive sanctions against Moscow, but so far, has not taken action.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin made necessary decisions to ensure the security of Russia and that attacks was Moscow’s response to Ukraine’s deep strikes.
Russia is grateful for American efforts to bring peace, which included the first direct peace talks in three years, Peskov said.
He said negotiations are “a decisive moment linked to emotional overload for everyone and emotional reactions”.
Ukrainian figures in the number of drones and missiles were dismissed could not be checked independently.
Trump clearly said he loses patience with Putin. “I always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something happened to him. He has gone absolutely crazy! ” Trump wrote in an article on social networks on Sunday evening.
Trump said Putin “kills many people unnecessarily”, stressing that “missiles and drones are slaughtered in cities in Ukraine, for no reason.”
The American president warned that if Putin wanted to conquer all of Ukraine, “would lead to the fall of Russia!” But Trump also expressed his frustration with regard to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying that he “does not make favors to his country by speaking as he does”.
Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds of other prisoners on Sunday in the third part of a major exchange which was a rare moment of cooperation
The Russian Defense Ministry said that each team had exchanged 303 soldiers, following the release of 307 fighters and civilians each on Saturday, and 390 Friday – the greatest total exchange of war.
In their talks held in Istanbul earlier this month, kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war and civil prisoners each. The exchange was the only tangible result of talks.
–Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press