Silence from the US only encourages Putin, Zelenskyy says, as he calls for new sanctions against Russia
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged international leaders to increase their pressure on Russia, after Moscow’s forces intensified strikes on Ukraine overnight.
The Ukrainian leader said rescuers are working in over 30 Ukrainian cities and villages after nearly 300 attack drones and almost 70 missiles, including ballistic ones, were launched by Russia overnight.
“The targets were Kyiv and the region, as well as Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, Chernihiv, Sumy, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Cherkasy regions,” he wrote in a post on X, in which he said the strikes were deliberately targeting “ordinary cities”.
Zelenskyy added:
Each such terrorist Russian strike is a sufficient reason for new sanctions against Russia.
Russia is dragging out this war and continues to kill every day. The world may go on a weekend break, but the war continues, regardless of weekends and weekdays. This cannot be ignored. Silence of America, silence of others around the world only encourage Putin.
Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped. Sanctions will certainly help. Determination matters now – the determination of the United States, of European countries, and of all those around the world who seek peace.
Key events
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has just confirmed that 303 Ukrainian captives have been returned from Russia in the final stage of the biggest prisoner exchange since Russia launched its full-scale assault in February 2022.
“Today, warriors of our Armed Forces, the National Guard, the State Border Guard Service, and the State Special Transport Service are returning home,” he said in a post on Telegram.
Russia and Ukraine exchange another 303 POWs each as part of agreed swap – Moscow
Russia and Ukraine have completed a three-day prisoner of war exchange, with each side swapping 303 more detainees on Sunday, according to Russia’s defence ministry.
“Thus, in accordance with the Russian-Ukrainian agreements reached on May 16 in Istanbul, for the period from May 23 to May 25, the Russian and Ukrainian sides carried out an exchange on the formula of 1,000 for 1,000 people,” ministry said.
The major prisoner swap was agreed during talks last week in Istanbul. There are no direct peace talks scheduled to take place between Russia and Ukraine in the future.
When Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, he demanded that Ukraine renounce joining Nato, sharply cut its army, and “protect” Russian language and culture to keep the country in Moscow’s orbit.
He since has also demanded that Kyiv withdraw its forces from the four regions Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully occupied — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week rejected Russia’s demands for Ukraine to withdraw its troops from these regions. “No one will withdraw our troops from our territories,” he told reporters.
It is therefore difficult to see a breakthrough in the negotiations happening anytime soon.
Silence from the US only encourages Putin, Zelenskyy says, as he calls for new sanctions against Russia
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged international leaders to increase their pressure on Russia, after Moscow’s forces intensified strikes on Ukraine overnight.
The Ukrainian leader said rescuers are working in over 30 Ukrainian cities and villages after nearly 300 attack drones and almost 70 missiles, including ballistic ones, were launched by Russia overnight.
“The targets were Kyiv and the region, as well as Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, Chernihiv, Sumy, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Cherkasy regions,” he wrote in a post on X, in which he said the strikes were deliberately targeting “ordinary cities”.
Zelenskyy added:
Each such terrorist Russian strike is a sufficient reason for new sanctions against Russia.
Russia is dragging out this war and continues to kill every day. The world may go on a weekend break, but the war continues, regardless of weekends and weekdays. This cannot be ignored. Silence of America, silence of others around the world only encourage Putin.
Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped. Sanctions will certainly help. Determination matters now – the determination of the United States, of European countries, and of all those around the world who seek peace.
The intense air attack comes after US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a US-proposed Ukraine ceasefire deal on Monday.
Trump said after the call that Russia and Ukraine would immediately start negotiations for a ceasefire, but the Kremlin said the process would take time and the US president indicated he was not ready to join Europe with fresh sanctions to pressure Moscow.
European leaders decided to increase pressure on Russia through sanctions after Trump briefed them on his call with the Russian leader, who appears unwilling to significantly budge from his maximalist positions.
Putin has only said that Moscow would work with Kyiv to craft a “memorandum” on a “possible future peace”. He has declined to support the US-proposed 30-day unconditional ceasefire, which Ukraine had already agreed to.
Ukrainian interior minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed 12 people had been killed and 60 more injured in the huge overnight Russian drone and missile attack.
Other death tolls given separately by regional authorities and rescuers had put the number of people killed at 13. We have not been able to independently verify either casualty figure.
“This was a combined, ruthless strike aimed at civilians. The enemy once again showed that its goal is fear and death,” Klymenko wrote on Telegram.
At least 11 people have been reported injured in Kyiv, with the drone attacks sparking multiple fires and damage to residential buildings, including a dormitory.
Residents were pictured taking refuge in subway stations to stay safe from the explosions.
The attack coincided with Kyiv Day, an annual city holiday usually celebrated on the last Sunday in May.
At least 12 people killed in heaviest Russian air attack on Ukraine since war started
At least 12 people have been killed and dozens others injured after Russian forces launched the biggest overnight drone and missile attack across Ukraine since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, officials said.
Three children – aged 8, 12 and 17 years old – were killed in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, four people in the Kyiv region were killed, one in Mykolaiv in the south, and four in the Khmelnytskyi region, according to officials and reports.
The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was a particular focus of the drone strikes. The city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said it was “under attack” but reassured people that the “air defences are operating” as they should.
Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russia attacked the country with 298 drones and 69 missiles overnight, one of the largest aerial attacks since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It said it downed 45 missiles and 266 drones.
It was “the most massive strike in terms of the number of air attack weapons on the territory of Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022,” Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, told the Associated Press. The overnight strike was the largest attack of the war in terms of weapons fired, although other strikes have killed more people.
Russian air defences, meanwhile, intercepted 110 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 13 over the Moscow and Tver regions, the country’s defence ministry said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
In Moscow, restrictions were imposed on at least four airports, including the main hub Sheremetyevo, the Russian civilian aviation authority said.
A day earlier, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and 250 attack drones on Kyiv, injuring 15 people in one of the biggest assaults on the Ukrainian capital since the beginning of the war more than three years ago.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the attacks indicated Moscow was “prolonging the war … Only additional sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy will force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.”
As my colleague Peter Beaumont notes in this story, the air raids came as Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds more prisoners on Saturday in a continuing major swap that amounted to a rare moment of cooperation amid otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire.
