KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia fired at least 800 drones in a massive daytime attack Wednesday on about 20 regions of Ukraine, killing at least six people and wounding dozens, including children, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.<\/p>\n
The prolonged barrage began in midmorning and lasted for hours, hitting the capital of Kyiv, the western city of Lviv near Poland, and the port of Odesa on the Black Sea, among other population centers, he said on the Telegram messaging app.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur soldiers are defending Ukraine, but Russia\u2019s obvious goal is to overload air defenses,\u201d Zelensky said, as the bombardment stretched into the late afternoon. He cautioned that a cruise and ballistic missile attack could follow the drone barrage.<\/p>\n
It was \u201cone of the longest, massive Russian attacks against Ukraine,\u201d he said on social media.<\/p>\n
Moscow\u2019s attacks on its neighbor are unrelenting, even as Ukraine is emboldened by its recent military accomplishments and as President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin said \u2014 without providing evidence \u2014 that the 4-year-old war could be approaching an end.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Zelensky said, 14 Ukrainian regions came under attack, followed by overnight strikes on Ukraine\u2019s residential, energy and railway infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to support Ukraine and not remain silent about Russia\u2019s war. Every time the war disappears from the top of the news, it encourages Russia to become even more savage,\u201d Zelensky said, apparently referring to the world\u2019s attention being focused on the Iran war.<\/p>\n
Trump and Putin talk of a possible end to the war<\/p>\n
Trump said Tuesday said he believes Moscow and Kyiv will soon reach a deal to end fighting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,\u201d Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing. \u201cBelieve it or not, it\u2019s getting closer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putin said in a speech last weekend that his invasion of Ukraine is possibly \u201ccoming to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither leader elaborated on what persuaded them about the possibility of peace in Europe\u2019s longest conflict since World War II. U.S.-led diplomatic efforts over the past year to end the war have fizzled after making no progress on key issues, such as whether Russia gets to keep Ukrainian land it has seized and what can be done to deter Moscow from invading again.<\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated Wednesday that Moscow\u2019s fundamental terms are unchanged, with Putin insisting that Ukraine pull its troops from the four regions \u2014 Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia \u2014 that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but hasn\u2019t fully captured.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that point, a ceasefire will be established, and the parties can calmly engage in negotiations, which, incidentally, will inevitably be very complex and involve a lot of important details,\u201d Peskov said.<\/p>\n
Zelensky vowed to keep pressure on Moscow to make concessions in talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not giving up on diplomatic efforts, and we hope that pressure on Russia, together with negotiations in different formats, will help bring peace,\u201d he said in a speech Wednesday in Bucharest, Romania, to representatives of countries on NATO\u2019s eastern flank.<\/p>\n
\u201cSanctions are working, our long-range (drone and missile) capabilities are working, and every form of pressure is working,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, European governments are assessing the merits of opening talks with Putin. Europe has for years tried to isolate the Russian leader and punished his country with international sanctions.<\/p>\n
Fighting appears to shift in Ukraine\u2019s favor<\/p>\n
The correlation of forces in the war has shifted in recent months. Ukraine has gone from pleading for international help with its defense to offering foreign countries its expertise on how to counter attacks, thanks to its domestically developed drone technology.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s long-range drone and missile attacks have disrupted energy facilities and manufacturing deep inside Russia, with three regions reporting strikes Wednesday. The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces intercepted and destroyed 286 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula, the Azov Sea and the Black Sea.<\/p>\n
On the 780-mile front line, the advance of Russia\u2019s bigger and better-equipped army has been slowing every month since October, according to the Institute for the Study of War.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s spring offensive has floundered, with Russian forces recording a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024, the Washington-based think tank said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only are Ukrainian defensive lines holding, but Ukrainian forces have managed to contest the tactical initiative in several areas of the front line even as Russia continues to lose disproportionate amounts of manpower to achieve minimal gains,\u201d the ISW said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Arhirova and Hatton write for the Associated Press. Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia fired at least 800 drones in a massive daytime attack Wednesday on about 20 regions of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1357,3107,592,26,9630,7478,182,9631,2408,5,899,25,11,1167,484],"class_list":{"0":"post-18478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-moscow","8":"tag-attack","9":"tag-country","10":"tag-drone","11":"tag-moscow","12":"tag-possible-peace","13":"tag-president-trump","14":"tag-putin","15":"tag-recent-talk","16":"tag-region","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-tuesday","19":"tag-ukraine","20":"tag-war","21":"tag-wednesday","22":"tag-zelensky"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}