Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticised the United States and the international community for remaining silent after Russia unleashed what Ukrainian officials described as the largest aerial assault on the country since the war began.
The silence, however, didn’t last. US President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “needlessly killing a lot of people.”
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” Trump wrote. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.”
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Putin, Trump said, wants to take over all of Ukraine. But, he warned, “it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”
Russian forces launched a massive overnight barrage Saturday as 367 drones and missiles targeted more than 30 cities and villages across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv. At least 12 people were killed, including three children, according to officials, in the northern region of Zhytomyr.
“The silence of America, the silence of others in the world only encourages Putin,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “Every such terrorist Russian strike is reason enough for new sanctions against Russia.”
Trump said in his social media statement that Zelensky is not helping his country’s cause by lashing out at the United States.
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” Trump said, blaming the war on Zelensky, Putin and former president Joe Biden.
“I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires, that have been started through Gross Incompetence and Hatred.
Saturday’s massive air raid followed a drone attack Friday that killed four people and coincided with the final day of a large-scale prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia.
Meanwhile, frustrations remain over shifting US policy as Ukraine and its allies push for a ceasefire deal.
Trump has called for an end to the war, but his administration has taken a softer line on Russia than previous ones, shifting American policy from supporting Ukraine toward accepting some of Russia’s account of the war.
The approach marks a sharp departure from the full-throated support Ukraine enjoyed from Washington under Biden.
While Ukraine and its European allies have pushed for a 30-day ceasefire as a step toward ending the three-year war, those efforts suffered a setback last week when Trump declined to impose additional sanctions on Moscow for not agreeing to an immediate pause in fighting.
Last Monday, Trump had a two-hour phone call with Putin, during which he appeared to have dropped his earlier insistence on a 30-day truce and suggested that he could walk away entirely from the negotiations to end a war that he once promised to end on “day one” of his second presidential term.
Moving independently of Washington, the European Union and the United Kingdom announced a new round of sanctions last week, targeting Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” — roughly 200 vessels used to transport Russian oil exports globally.
The EU said these were the 17th set of European sanctions imposed on Russia since it invaded its neighbor in 2022.
In Washington, secretary of state Marco Rubio told lawmakers that the administration would continue to push an existing bill that could impose a 500 per cent tariff on buyers of Russian oil and gas if there was no progress on a peace deal.
But, he added that Trump “believes that right now, you start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop talking, and there’s value in us being able to talk and drive them to get to the table.”
While the bombs continue to fall on Ukraine, Zelensky posted on Telegram on Sunday that the third phase of the “1000-for-1000” exchange agreement had been completed after two exchanges last week, with pictures of returning soldiers draped in Ukrainian flags.
The swap, the latest of dozens of exchanges since the war began and the biggest involving Ukrainian civilians, has not indicated an end to widespread fighting. Battles have continued along the roughly 1000km front line, killing tens of thousands of soldiers.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that Moscow would give Ukraine a draft document outlining its conditions for a “sustainable, long-term, comprehensive” peace agreement, once the ongoing prisoner exchange had finished.
Trump congratulated both sides after they struck the prisoner exchange deal in Istanbul.
But after Russia’s largest attack yet, Kyiv remains wary of easing pressure.
“Without pressure, nothing will change and Russia and its allies will only build up forces for such murders in Western countries,” Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram.
“Moscow will fight as long as it has the ability to produce weapons.”