Over 77,000 Russian targets hit, destroyed in March using drones, Ukraine's commander says
The number of targets hit is 10% higher than in February, according to Syrskyi. The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify these claims.
Ukraine has pioneered drone technology during Russia's full-scale war, introducing various ground-, air-, and sea-based models for combat and reconnaissance missions.
Syrskyi called boosting the combat capabilities of unmanned systems on the battlefield one of Ukraine's key priorities.
"By increasing the role of drones, we are saving the lives of our defenders," Syrskyi added.
Ukraine is working to scale up domestic production, having the capacity to produce over 5 million first-person-view (FPV) drones per year, Presidential Advisor Oleksandr Kamyshin said.
Kyiv has also developed long-range missile-drone hybrids, including the Palianytsia and Peklo models, which use turbojet engines as cruise missile alternatives. President Volodymyr Zelensky has set a target of producing at least 30,000 long-range drones in 2025.
Read also: How the next generation of Ukrainian drone pilots are being trained at UAV schools
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The Hill
27 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump cancels Bedminster vacation to work on Ukraine-Russia talks
President Trump canceled his August vacation to his Bedminster resort to work on talks to end the Ukraine-Russia war, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. Leavitt said Trump considered continuing peace talks while at his New Jersey golf resort but decided to stay at the White House instead. 'This is normally the time when the president goes on vacation, but not this president,' she said. 'There [were] discussions about him working from Bedminster for a couple of weeks, but he decided against it.' 'He's a man on a mission. He wants to move. Get things done quickly,' Leavitt added. 'He wants to strike when the iron is hot.' Presidents typically take a vacation in August while Congress is out for its recess. Trump took a 17-day trip to Bedminster in 2017 during his first term. Trump has been focused on ending the Ukraine-Russia war and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Days later, on Monday, Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders at the White House for talks. The president announced after those talks that he is working to arrange a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky, followed by a trilateral meeting that would involve him. When asked about the timing of the trilateral meeting, Leavitt replied, 'It's hard to judge. I think he wants to see how the bilat goes.' The White House has been optimistic about the meetings taking place, without giving a timeline. Leavitt told reporters that Putin promised he would have a direct meeting with Zelensky.
Boston Globe
27 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Trump offers assurances that US troops won't be sent to help defend Ukraine
The Republican president, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders held hours of talks at the White House on Monday aimed at bringing an end to Russia's war against Ukraine. While answering questions from journalists, Trump did not rule out sending U.S. troops to participate in a European-led effort to defend Ukraine as part of security guarantees sought by Zelenskyy. Trump said after his meeting in Alaska last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Putin was open to the idea of security guarantees for Ukraine. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But asked Tuesday on Fox News Channel's 'Fox & Friends' what assurances he could provide going forward and beyond his term that American troops would not be part of defending Ukraine's border, Trump said, 'Well, you have my assurance, and I'm president.' Advertisement Trump would have no control over the U.S. military after his term ends in January 2029. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later on Tuesday emphasized that 'U.S. boots will not be on the ground' as part of any potential peacekeeping mission. The president also said in the interview that he is optimistic that a deal can be reached to end the Russian invasion, but he underscored that Ukraine will have to set aside its hope of getting back Crimea, which was seized by Russian forces in 2014, and its long-held aspirations of joining the NATO military alliance. Advertisement 'Both of those things are impossible,' Trump said. Putin, as part of any potential deal to pull his forces out of Ukraine, is looking for the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as recognition of Crimea as Russian territory. Trump on Monday said that he was arranging for direct talks between Putin and Zelenskyy. But the Kremlin has not yet said whether Putin, who has resisted previous calls by Trump and others for direct negotiations on ending the war, is committed to a face-to-face meeting with the Ukrainian leader. Asked whether Putin has promised Trump that he'll meet directly with the Ukrainian leader, Leavitt responded affirmatively. 'He has,' Leavitt said of Putin. Trump, early on Monday during talks with Zelenskyy and European leaders, said that he was pressing for three-way talks among Zelenskyy, Putin and himself. But after speaking to Putin later in the day, Trump said that he was arranging first for a face-to-face between Zelenskyy and Putin and that three-way talks would follow if necessary. 'It was an idea that evolved in the course of the president's conversations with both President Putin, President Zelensky and the European leaders yesterday,' Leavitt explained. But when discussing a phone call held after the meeting between Trump and the Russian leader, Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov gave no indication that either a bilateral or a trilateral meeting with Ukraine had been agreed. Trump said he believed Putin's course of action would become clear in the coming weeks. Advertisement 'I think Putin is tired of it,' Trump said. 'I think they're all tired of it. But you never know. We're going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks. That I can tell you.'
Atlantic
28 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Trump Doesn't Understand What Lasting Peace Requires
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. On the surface, yesterday's White House summit on Ukraine showed an impressively unified front among President Donald Trump, major European leaders, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The participants all smiled and expressed optimism. Zelensky donned a suit, avoiding harangues like those he received over his military attire during his previous visit. Yes, the leaders offered sometimes exaggerated praise for Trump, but the president also praised each of them in hyperbolic terms, and he had a few good lines, even if NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte laughed a little too hard at some of them. The biggest division during the meeting was not about whether Trump is more sympathetic to Russia or Ukraine, the central question in the past. 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The White House said today that Putin has agreed as well, but the Kremlin has been publicly noncommittal.) Zelensky and the other Europeans, meanwhile, were much more concerned about the details of what might come up at this eventual trilateral meeting, or along the way. For the pro-Ukraine bloc, the big victory from yesterday was a discussion of security guarantees for Ukraine—basically, assurances that once a peace deal is in place, allies will assist Ukraine if Russia restarts hostilities. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, discussed creating something similar to NATO's Article 5 mutual-defense agreement. But Trump was notably vague about what sort of commitments he might make. Trump also wavered on the importance of a cease-fire. Prior to his summit with Putin in Alaska last week, Trump had insisted on a cessation of hostilities, which Putin flatly rejected. Now Trump seems to have given up on that. 'All of us would obviously prefer an immediate cease-fire while we work on a lasting peace,' he said. 'And maybe something like that could happen. As of this moment, it's not happening.' (As if to underscore the point, Russian drones struck Ukraine yesterday—though this sort of provocation also seems to be one reason for Trump's new openness to Ukraine.) Some observers were appalled by Trump's meeting with Putin on American soil, noting that the Russian president is a butcher, an autocrat, and a war criminal wanted on international warrants. All of this is true, and nauseating, but as National Review 's Rich Lowry notes, achieving peace will require dealing with Putin. (When President Barack Obama tried diplomacy with Iran, Republicans were outraged; now the roles are reversed.) Peace deals are judged on results, not always the character of those making them. Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger were Nobel Peace laureates, after all. Sitting down, however, is not enough on its own, and if treated that way, it can simply encourage bad actors such as Putin by giving them status and recognition without requiring any or many concessions. Trump sees himself as a dealmaker, and he's often described—sometimes, though not always, positively—as transactional. But he is so personally motivated by deals per se that he doesn't always appear to grasp that others are not, or why they're not. Trump's approach to this negotiation has ignored the fact that Putin doesn't seem interested in a deal at all: He appears content to drag the war out as long as possible. Nor does Trump's method account for the fact that some terms of a peace deal would be so onerous as to make it unacceptable to Zelensky on patriotic and political grounds. Dealing with the messy details is hard work, and Trump has never shown much interest in, or patience for, policy minutiae. This fetishization of process over substance has previously led Trump into the same diplomatic cul-de-sacs. In 2018—despite the skepticism of some of his own aides—he met with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Singapore. The summit produced all the pageantry and pomp that Trump adores, and it led to a pen-pal relationship between the men, but in part because that was his focus, the gambit has not produced any breakthroughs on North Korea opening up, reducing nefarious activities overseas, or relinquishing nuclear weapons. Trump has held multiple meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to move toward a peace deal in Gaza, but his inability to get much traction there has led him to lash out at his ally. Other perils still dog the Ukraine peace process. Trump continues to speak about Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine as though Ukraine had some choice or culpability in the matter. 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And he went on dates. When a relationship didn't work out, he'd return to 'professional mode'—bouncing between 'intermittent surges' of dating and work. 'I spent a lot of my early adulthood going, When everything's right, it will happen,' he told me. 'I'm definitely a The stars will align kind of person. And then one day it hit me: They were not aligning.' That's how Calkins ended up, in his 40s, making an appointment with a fertility clinic. Read. A new generation of disabled writers isn't interested in inspiring readers, Sophia Stewart writes. Watch. Remaking an Akira Kurosawa masterpiece is no small task, but Highest 2 Lowest (out now in theaters) is a worthy attempt, David Sims writes.
