Russia’s army launched a huge drone assault on Ukraine overnight into Sunday, killing one person and hundreds of cows.
One man was fatally injured in the assault on the town of Pavlohrad, a 14-year-old girl was wounded, and 500 cattle died after a drone hit the shed they were housed in, said Serhiy Lysak, governor of Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 57 of the 149 drones, while 67 others disappeared from radars without reaching their targets. AFP, the news agency called the attack “vast”.
Russia has escalated its nightly airstrikes on Ukrainian population centres in recent days, leading to a harsher tone from the Trump Administration about who is to blame for blocking a peace deal.
On Saturday, Mr Trump accused Vladimir Putin of “tapping him along” and said that he was considering imposing sanctions on Russian banks and secondary countries.
“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Mr Trump wrote on his website Truth Social.
“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘banking’ or ‘secondary sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!
Russian investigators have filed terrorism charges against a Ukrainian citizen suspected of killing a senior Russian military officer near Moscow, Interfax news agency reported on Sunday.
The Kremlin has blamed Kyiv for Friday’s car bomb that killed 59-year-old Yaroslav Moskalik, the latest in a series of Russian military officers and pro-war figures to be assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine has not commented on the incident.
Interfax, citing Russia’s Investigative Committee, said the suspect, Ignat Kuzin, had pleaded guilty to killing Moskalik and had said he was recruited by Ukraine’s security services.
Kyiv’s ambassador in Berlin has called on the incoming German government to “take an even stronger leadership role” in supporting Ukraine.
Oleksii Makeiev said that chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz “clearly wants” to do more. The two sides are “in close contact,” he told German news outlet t-online, adding that: “We have many trustworthy partners among German officials and politicians. In this regard, I look to the future with confidence.”
Outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz was often seen as an obstacle to swifter support for Ukraine, initially delaying on supplying modern tanks. He also refused to send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Merz has said that he is open to supplying Kyiv with Taurus missiles.
Russian aerial bombardment in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka left three civilians dead and four others wounded on Sunday, local prosecutors said.
According to a Facebook post by the Donetsk region prosecutor’s office, Russia dropped three glide bombs on the city, situated about 6.2 miles from the front line. Russian forces have inched closer towards it over the past year.
A couple, aged 47 and 48, were killed, along with a 78-year-old pensioner, the post said, and 21 homes were damaged. Pictures attached to it showed a destroyed single-storey house and the burnt-out shell of a car.
Four people were wounded in a Russian airstrike on the city of Kherson on Sunday morning, according to local officials.
The incident was part of a wave or aerial attacks on Ukrainian towns that killed at least one person.
One man was killed and a 14-year-old girl wounded in the city of Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region, which was hit for the third consecutive night, regional governor Serhii Lysak said.
Elsewhere, one person was wounded in drone attacks on the Odesa region and one other in the city of Zhytomyr.
In its daily Ukraine update, the Ministry of Defence has taken a closer look at foreign volunteers who sign up to fight for Russia.
Some 1,500 foreigners joined the Russian armed forces over a 13-month period between April 2023 and May 2024.
Most of the recruits are from East Asia or the former Soviet Republics. The recruitment of foreign fighters is “non-systematic”, with foreigners attracted to fighting for Russia due to financial incentives, the MoD says.
“Foreign nationals almost certainly make up a very small proportion of the Russian Armed Forces’ total recruitment numbers,” the brief states.
Donald Trump has the chance to secure his place as the greatest ever US president by coming to Kyiv and showing his solidarity with the people of Ukraine, Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, has said.
“I believe that Trump really can become the greatest president in the history of the United States — he could become iconic,” Merezhko told the Kyiv Independent.
“If he comes to Kyiv and says something like ‘I’m Ukrainian’ or ‘We express solidarity with you, we are on your side, you’re fighting for the right cause,’ he will go down in history as a person who might eclipse even Kennedy and Reagan,” he said.
Russian intelligence agencies have arrested a man they say is responsible for setting off a car bomb that killed a senior general on Friday.
The FSB said on Saturday that they had detained an “agent of the Ukrainian special services” in connection with the assassination of Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik on the outskirts of Moscow.
“Ukrainian special services agent Ignat Kuzin, born in 1983, a resident of Ukraine, who planted explosives in a Volkswagen Golf in the city of Balashikha in the Moscow region, killing Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, was detained,” the FSB said in a statement.
Mr Moskalik, deputy head of the main operational directorate of the military’s General Staff, was killed when a home-made device detonated in a car park in the city of Balashikha, causing a huge explosion.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said US President Donald Trump’s comment that maybe Russian President Vladimir Putin does not want to stop the war and is “just tapping me along” is “definitely a sign of progress”.
Mrs Badenoch told Sky News Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: “Well, I think this is definitely a sign of progress. It’s a positive signal.
“I have always said that President Zelensky was the hero in this war, Putin is the aggressor, and for those of us who believe in freedom, we should not allow the aggressor to win, certainly not someone like Putin, who doesn’t want to see freedom in Russia or Ukraine.”
She added that it was “really heartening” to see Mr Trump talking to Mr Zelensky in the Vatican on Saturday “after that really awful press conference”, adding: “I think we should all be pleased to see these positive signals”.
Asked if she could envisage a land for peace deal in which Ukraine surrenders some of its land and if she would support it, or if it was rewarding aggression, Mrs Badenoch said: “It would be rewarding aggression.”
She added that Ukraine losing the war would be a “very bad sign” and a “weakening for Europe”.
Oleksandr Merezkho, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party, has described the US proposal for a peace deal, which reportedly contains recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula as “meaningless.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” said Oleksandr Merezkho. “We will never recognise Crimea as part of Russia.”
In an interview published in Time magazine on Friday, Donald Trump said that: “Crimea will stay with Russia. Zelensky understands that, and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time.”
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