KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched its biggest drone attack against Ukraine overnight, a Ukrainian official said Monday, part of an escalating bombing campaign that has further dashed hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the 3-year-old war.
On the third straight night of significant aerial bombardments, U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at Russian leader Vladimir Putin, saying he had gone “crazy” by stepping up attacks on Ukraine.
The expansion of Russia's air campaign appeared to be another setback U.S.-led peace efforts, as Putin looks determined to capture more Ukrainian territory and inflict more damage. It comes after Kyiv accepted an unconditional 30-day ceasefire in March that was proposed by the U.S. but that Moscow effectively rejected.
This month alone, Russia has broken its record for aerial bombardments of Ukraine three times.
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, analysts say.
“Only a sense of complete impunity can allow Russia to carry out such attacks and continually escalate their scale,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram on Monday. “There is no significant military logic to this, but there is considerable political meaning.”
A spate of large bombardments
The Russian bombardment on Sunday night included 355 drones, Yuriy Ihnat, head of the Ukrainian air force’s communications department, told The Associated Press, calling it the biggest of the war.
The previous night, Russia fired 298 drones and 69 missiles in what Ukrainian officials said was the largest combined aerial assault of the conflict. From Friday to Sunday, Russia launched around 900 drones at Ukraine, officials said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said Monday that its forces shot down 103 Ukrainian drones overnight that were flying over southern and western Russia, including near Moscow. Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said 32 flights scheduled to land at three Moscow airports on Sunday and Monday had to divert amid Ukrainian drone attacks.
The numbers from Ukraine and Russia could not be independently verified.
Soon after Russia's Feb. 24, 2022, invasion, the conflict became a testing ground for increasingly sophisticated drone warfare. Drones are generally cheaper to produce than missiles.
Russia has received Iranian-made Shahed drones since 2022 and is now believed to be manufacturing its own version. Ukraine, as well as receiving smaller battlefield drones from its allies to help it compensate for a troop shortage, has developed its own long-range drones for strikes deep inside Russia.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that there are “no longer any range restrictions for weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine — neither by the British, nor by the French or by us, and not by the Americans either.”
“That means Ukraine can also defend itself by, for example, attacking military positions in Russia. Until a while ago, it couldn’t … it can now,” he said.
It was not clear if Merz was referring to the easing of restrictions on longer-range weapons late last year. Before becoming chancellor, Merz called for Germany to supply Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Kyiv, something his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, refused to do.
Commenting on Merz's statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a decision to lift range restrictions was “quite dangerous” and "contrary to our efforts to reach a political settlement.”
Europeans threaten sanctions
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the latest Russian bombardments “show the extent to which President Putin has lied to the Europeans and to the Americans.”
He told reporters while on a visit to Vietnam that Ukraine’s allies should, with U.S. support, set Putin a deadline “so that finally everyone can understand that he is lying and that beyond this deadline, massive retaliation is carried out, in particular in terms of sanctions.”
The European Union’s top diplomat, foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, also said the bloc intended to impose more sanctions on Moscow, calling Russia’s latest attacks as “totally appalling.”
Trump has threatened massive sanctions, too, but so far hasn’t taken action. But he made it clear Sunday night that 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.
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 also expressed frustration with Zelenskyy, saying that he is “doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does.”
Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Putin makes decisions that are necessary to ensure Russia’s security and that the attacks were Moscow's response to a series of deep strikes by Ukraine.
He said negotiations are at “a decisive moment that is linked to emotional overloading for everyone and emotional reactions.”
Russia and Ukraine swapped hundreds more prisoners Sunday in the third and last part of a major exchange. All told, each side released more than 1,000 prisoners — soldiers and civilians — in the biggest swap of the war.
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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels, John Leicester in Paris and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Illia Novikov And Volodymyr Yurchuk, The Associated Press
