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Friday, June 13, 2025

Russia sent a record number of drones into Ukraine as Trump says Putin has ‘gone crazy’

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
18 days ago
20250526
In this photo taken from video distributed by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, May 26, 2025, Russian serviceman train to operate military drones in an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo taken from video distributed by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, May 26, 2025, Russian serviceman train to operate military drones in an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Uncredited

Rus­sia overnight launched the biggest drone at­tack on Ukraine in the more than three-year war, a Ukrain­ian of­fi­cial said Mon­day. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Russ­ian leader Vladimir Putin has gone “crazy” by step­ping up the bomb­ing of Ukraine just as the U.S. tries to bro­ker peace.

The Russ­ian bom­bard­ment on Sun­day night in­clud­ed 355 drones, Yuriy Ih­nat, head of the Ukrain­ian air force’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

The pre­vi­ous night, Rus­sia fired 298 drones and 69 mis­siles of var­i­ous types at Ukraine in what Ukraini­ans said was the largest com­bined aer­i­al as­sault dur­ing the con­flict. From Fri­day to Sun­day, Rus­sia launched around 900 drones at Ukraine, of­fi­cials said.

The es­ca­la­tion ap­peared to thwart hopes that Trump’s peace ef­forts might lead to a break­through in the near term, as Putin looks de­ter­mined to cap­ture more Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry and in­flict more dam­age.

Rus­sia has this month bro­ken its record for aer­i­al bom­bard­ments of Ukraine three times. The ex­pan­sion of its air cam­paign came af­ter Kyiv in March ac­cept­ed an un­con­di­tion­al 30-day cease­fire pro­posed by the U.S. but Moscow ef­fec­tive­ly re­ject­ed it.

Rus­sia is al­so still push­ing along the rough­ly 1,000-kilo­me­ter (620-mile) front line, where it has made slow and cost­ly progress, and is as­sem­bling its forces for a sum­mer of­fen­sive, Ukraine and mil­i­tary an­a­lysts say.

“On­ly a sense of com­plete im­puni­ty can al­low Rus­sia to car­ry out such at­tacks and con­tin­u­al­ly es­ca­late their scale,” Ukraine Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy wrote on Telegram on Mon­day. “There is no sig­nif­i­cant mil­i­tary log­ic to this, but there is con­sid­er­able po­lit­i­cal mean­ing.”

He re­peat­ed his call for tighter in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on Rus­sia as a way of end­ing the war, be­cause Rus­sia’s “de­sire to fight must be de­prived of re­sources.”

The Eu­ro­pean Union’s top diplo­mat, for­eign pol­i­cy chief Ka­ja Kallas, on Mon­day de­scribed the lat­est at­tacks on Kyiv as “to­tal­ly ap­palling” and said the bloc in­tend­ed to im­pose more sanc­tions on Rus­sia.

Trump has threat­ened mas­sive sanc­tions on Moscow, too, but so far hasn’t tak­en ac­tion.

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said Putin makes de­ci­sions that are nec­es­sary to en­sure Rus­sia’s se­cu­ri­ty and that the at­tacks were Moscow’s re­sponse to deep strikes by Ukraine.

Rus­sia is grate­ful for Amer­i­can ef­forts to bring peace, which have in­clud­ed the coun­tries’ first di­rect peace talks in three years, Peskov said.

He said ne­go­ti­a­tions are at “a de­ci­sive mo­ment that is linked to emo­tion­al over­load­ing for every­one and emo­tion­al re­ac­tions.”

The Ukrain­ian num­bers for how many drones and mis­siles were fired could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

Trump made it clear he is los­ing pa­tience with Putin. “I’ve al­ways had a very good re­la­tion­ship with Vladimir Putin of Rus­sia, but some­thing has hap­pened to him. He has gone ab­solute­ly CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a so­cial me­dia post on Sun­day night.

Trump said Putin is “need­less­ly killing a lot of peo­ple,” point­ing out that “mis­siles and drones are be­ing shot in­to Cities in Ukraine, for no rea­son what­so­ev­er.”

The U.S. pres­i­dent warned that if Putin wants to con­quer all of Ukraine, it will “lead to the down­fall of Rus­sia!” But Trump ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy as well, say­ing that he is “do­ing his Coun­try no favours by talk­ing the way he does.”

Rus­sia and Ukraine swapped hun­dreds more pris­on­ers Sun­day in the third and last part of a ma­jor ex­change that was a rare mo­ment of co­op­er­a­tion

Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said each side ex­changed 303 sol­diers, fol­low­ing the re­lease of 307 com­bat­ants and civil­ians each on Sat­ur­day, and 390 on Fri­day — the biggest to­tal swap of the war.

In their talks held in Is­tan­bul ear­li­er this month, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to swap 1,000 pris­on­ers of war and civil­ian de­tainees each. The ex­change has been the on­ly tan­gi­ble out­come from the talks. —KYIV, Ukraine (AP)

________

Sto­ry by IL­LIA NOVIKOV and VOLODYMYR YURCHUK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Lorne Cook in Brus­sels con­tributed to this re­port.


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