U.S. President Donald Trump said he is considering more sanctions on Moscow after Russia launched a barrage of 367 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, including the capital Kyiv, in the largest aerial attack of the war so far.
The strikes killed at least 12 people, including three children in the northern region of Zhytomyr, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on the United States, which has taken a softer public line on Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, since Trump took office, to speak out.
“The silence of America, the silence of others in the world only encourages Putin,” he wrote on Telegram.
“Every such terrorist Russian strike is reason enough for new sanctions against Russia.”
Asked if he was considering more sanctions on Russia, Trump said, “Absolutely.”
“I’m not happy with what Putin’s doing. He’s killing a lot of people,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey on Sunday just before boarding his plane for a return to the White House from his Bedminister golf club.
“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin. I’ve known him a long time. Always gotten along with him. But he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all. We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities.”
Upon returning to Washington, Trump posted on social media that Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY!”
Trump also criticised Zelenskiy, posting that the Ukrainian leader “is doing his Country no favours by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.”
The Russian attack was the largest of the war in terms of weapons fired, although other strikes have killed more people.
“This was a combined, ruthless strike aimed at civilians. The enemy once again showed that its goal is fear and death,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram.
Russia denies targeting civilians in what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The latest assault comes as Ukraine and Russia prepared to conduct the third and final day of a prisoner swap in which both sides will exchange a total of 1000 people each.
U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg said on Sunday the attack was “a clear violation” of the 1977 Geneva Peace Protocols and called for an immediate ceasefire.
CEASEFIRE EFFORTS
Ukraine and its European allies have sought to push Moscow into signing a 30-day ceasefire as a first step to negotiating an end to the three-year war.
Their efforts suffered a blow earlier this week when Trump declined to place further sanctions on Moscow for not agreeing to an immediate pause in fighting, as Kyiv had wanted.
Russia also sought to press its attacks on the ground, claiming to have taken control of the village of Romanivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Russian Defence Ministry said. Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 298 drones and 69 missiles in its overnight assault, although it said it was able to down 266 drones and 45 missiles.
Damage extended to a string of regional centres, including Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, as well as Mykolaiv in the south and Ternopil in the west.
In Kyiv, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said 11 people were injured in drone strikes. No deaths were reported in the capital, although four were killed in the region around the city, according to officials.
This was the second large aerial attack in two days. On Friday evening, Russia launched dozens of drones and ballistic missiles at Kyiv in waves that continued through the night.
In northeastern Ukraine, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said early on Sunday that drones hit three city districts and injured three people. Blasts shattered windows in high-rise apartment blocks.
Drone strikes killed a 77-year-old man and injured five people in the southern city of Mykolaiv, the regional governor said. He published a picture of a residential apartment block with a large hole from an explosion and rubble scattered over the ground.
In the western region of Khmelnytskyi, many hundreds of km (miles) away from the frontlines, four people were killed and five others wounded, according to the governor.
“Without pressure, nothing will change and Russia and its allies will only build up forces for such murders in Western countries,” the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram.
