Russia launched a sweeping drone assault across Ukraine overnight into Sunday, targeting multiple regions, after US President Donald Trump cast doubt over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the war.
Three people died and four were injured in air strikes on Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region, while another person died and a 14-year-old girl was injured in the city of Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region, which was hit for the third consecutive night, regional officials said.
The attacks came hours after Russia claimed to have regained control over the remaining parts of the Kursk region, which Ukrainian forces seized in a surprise incursion last August. Ukrainian officials said the fighting in Kursk was still ongoing.
Mr Trump said on Saturday that he doubts Mr Putin wants to end the more than three-year war in Ukraine, expressing new scepticism that a peace deal can be reached soon.
Just a day earlier, the US president had said Ukraine and Russia were “very close to a deal”.
After his return to the US following Pope Francis’s funeral in Rome – at which he briefly met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – Mr Trump said on social media: “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days.” He also hinted at further sanctions against Russia.
The Trump-Zelensky conversation on the sidelines of the funeral was the first face-to-face encounter between the two since they argued during a heated Oval Office meeting at the White House in late February.
Russia fired 149 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks, the Ukrainian air force said, adding that 57 were intercepted and another 67 jammed.
One person was injured in drone attacks on the Odesa region and another in the city of Zhitomir. Four people were also injured in a Russian air strike on the city of Kherson on Sunday morning, according to local officials.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that air defences shot down five Ukrainian drones in the border region of Bryansk, as well as three drones over the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Five people were injured when Ukrainian forces shelled the city of Horlivka in the partially-occupied Donetsk region, the city’s Russian-installed mayor Ivan Prikhodko said.
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