Russia targeted Ukraine with more than 800 drones in a large-scale daytime assault that killed at least nine people on Wednesday, hours after a previous deadly barrage. The strikes came as Kyiv and Moscow traded long-range attacks after a brief ceasefire, and despite the latest suggestion from Donald Trump that the war could soon come to an end.
Ukrainian monitors detected at least eight salvoes of Russian drones, including some entering from Belarus, with the apparent target being Kyiv’s critical infrastructure. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Romania on Wednesday, wrote on X: “Since midnight, at least 800 Russian drones have already been launched, and the attack is ongoing, with additional drones entering our country’s airspace.” Moscow had targeted western regions closest to the borders with Nato countries, he added.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Anita Orbán, condemned attacks on ethnic Hungarian regions in western Ukraine in a Facebook video. They would be on the agenda of prime minister Péter Magyar’s inaugural cabinet meeting later, she said. Slovakia announced it would be closing its border crossings with Ukraine for security reasons until further notice.
Trump’s latest claims of progress in negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow were offered with scant detail and follow similar unfounded claims. “The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” the US president told reporters as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing. “Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.” His comments follow remarks by Vladimir Putin in a speech last weekend that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was possibly coming to an end.
The latest strikes came a day after one of Zelenskyy’s top aides, Andriy Yermak, appeared in a Kyiv court after Ukraine’s two anti-corruption agencies named him as a suspect in a money-laundering scheme. He was a close friend of Zelenskyy’s for years, and led Ukraine’s talks with the US until an anti-corruption raid on his flat last November prompted his resignation. Yermak’s lawyer has described allegations that the former head of the presidential office had been caught up in a corruption scandal surrounding a $10.5m luxury construction project as baseless.
Russia’s earlier strikes had targeted Ukraine’s residential and railway infrastructure in the central Dnipro and north-eastern Kharkiv regions, port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region and energy facilities in the central Poltava region, according to Zelenskyy. Fourteen regions had come under attack on Tuesday, he said. On the frontline, the advance of Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army has been slowing each month since last October, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Moscow’s spring offensive has floundered and its forces recorded a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024, the Washington-based thinktank said.
