Russia launched early Sunday its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the start of the war between the two countries, Ukrainian officials said, with at least one person killed during strikes near the capital of Kyiv.
Ukraine’s air force said that Russian forces launched 273 drones or decoys. The attacks targeted the country’s Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions. One woman was killed, Ukrainian authorities said, and another three people, including a 4-year-old, were wounded.
The attack comes on the heels of a meeting late last week in Istanbul between Ukrainian and Russian delegations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was willing to meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin during those talks, but the Russian leader instead sent lower-level officials.
The talks did not produce a ceasefire, but the two nations did agree to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each.
President Trump over the weekend said he’ll speak with both leaders on Monday in an effort to move the peace process forward.
“I will be speaking, by telephone, to President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Monday, at 10:00 a.m. The subjects of the call will be, stopping the ’bloodbath’ that is killing, on average, more than 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade,” Mr. Trump posted Saturday in all caps on social media.
“I will be speaking to President Zelenskyy of Ukraine and then, with President Zelenskyy, various members of NATO,” he posted in all caps. “Hopefully it will be a productive day, a ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war, a war that should never have happened, will end. God bless us all!!!”
In an interview with a Russian journalist Sunday, Mr. Putin said he, too, is seeking peace.
“The objectives are about the elimination of the original causes of this crisis, the formation of conditions for the long-lasting and sustainable peace and the provision of security to Russia,” Mr. Putin said, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
But U.S. officials seem deeply skeptical. The Trump administration has threatened to walk away from the peace process entirely if significant progress isn’t made soon.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview over the weekend that “we don’t have time to waste.”
“There are a lot of other things happening in the world that we also need to be paying attention to. So we don’t want to be involved in this process of just endless talks, there has to be some progress, some movement forward,” Mr. Rubio told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview that airs Sunday. “And if at the end of this, in the next few days, we get a document produced by both sides, and it shows that both sides are making concessions and being realistic and rational in their approach, then I think we can feel good about continuing to remain engaged.”
“If, on the other hand, what we see is not very productive, perhaps we’ll have a different assessment,” Mr. Rubio said.
