Russia launches largest Ukraine drone strikes since start of war days after face-to-face peace talks
Russia has launched what is thought to be the largest drone strike on Ukraine since it invaded the country in 2022, just days after Friday's peace talks.
A total of 273 exploding drones and decoys were fired by Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces on Saturday night, Ukraine's air force said.
The attacks targeted the area around the capital, Kyiv, as well as the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions in the east of Ukraine.
A 28-year-old woman was killed and three others, including a four-year-old child, were wounded, Kyiv regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk posted on the Telegram messaging app.
Hours earlier, nine civilians were killed and seven wounded in a separate Russian strike on a bus in Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region on Saturday.
Horror photos from the scene show the mangled wreckage of the bus with pools of blood on the road around it.
'This was a deliberate killing of civilians,' Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, as he called on further pressure to be 'exerted on Russia to stop the killings.'
Much of the eastern half of Ukraine remained under air raid alerts on Sunday morning.
The number of drones fired by Russia is greater than the previously reported record. That happened in February when Russian forces launched 267 drones on the eve of the third anniversary of the start of the conflict.
Of the drones and decoys used, 88 were intercepted and a further 128 are believed to have been lost due to electronic jamming, Ukraine said.
The fresh assault came after Friday's US-mediated peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv — the first between the two countries since the start of the conflict. The two sides failed to agree to a ceasefire.
Ukraine has accused Russia of stepping up its attacks in the wake of the collapsed peace talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
'It's been a tough night. The Russians have always used war and attacks to intimidate everyone in negotiations,' the head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, wrote on X on Sunday.
Ukraine has blamed Russia for the collapse of the peace talks, accusing Moscow of introducing 'unacceptable demands' not previously discussed, including calls for Kyiv to withdraw from vast swaths of territory they control.
Russia 'deliberately wants to throw nonstarters on the table in order to walk away from today's meeting without any results,' a Ukrainian official told The Associated Press.
Ukraine remains focused on achieving an immediate ceasefire and a pathway to real diplomacy 'just like the US, European partners and other countries proposed,' the official added.
President Trump has said he will speak to Russia and Ukraine's leaders over the phone on Monday in a fresh bid to end the 'bloodbath' in Ukraine.
Attention has now turned to whether a direct meeting between Putin and Zelensky — the first since 2019 — could go ahead.
President Zelensky challenged his Russian counterpart to meet him in Turkey this week, but Putin sent a team of aides instead.
Meanwhile, Zelensky met with JD Vance in Rome on Sunday for the inaugural mass of the new American Pope Leo.
It was the first face-to-face meeting between the pair since they clashed in the White House in February after the US Vice President accused Ukraine's leader of being ungrateful for America's support in the war.
The pair smiled and shook hands as they greeted each other during mass, ahead of Pope Leo's private meeting with President Zelensky on Sunday.
Originally published as Russia launches largest Ukraine drone strikes since start of war days after face-to-face peace talks
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Amid talk of peace, the war is stepping up with Russian forces grabbing more territory in Ukraine and Kyiv unfurling high-profile drone and sabotage attacks on Russia's nuclear-capable bomber fleet and, according to Moscow, on railways. Russia, which controls a little under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has taken more than 190sq km of the Sumy region of eastern Ukraine in less than a month, according to pro-Ukrainian open source maps. Now, according to the Russian defence ministry, units of the 90th Tank Division of the Central Grouping of Russian forces have reached the western frontier of Ukraine's Donetsk region and are attacking the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region. "The enemy does not abandon its intentions to enter the Dnipropetrovsk region," Ukraine's Southern Defence Forces said on Telegram. "Our soldiers are courageously and professionally holding their section of the front, disrupting the occupier's plans. "This work does not stop for a minute." The pro-Ukrainian Deep State map showed Russian forces very close to the Dnipropetrovsk region, which had a population of more than three million before the war, and advancing on the city of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region from several directions. A Ukrainian military spokesman, Dmytro Zaporozhets, said Russian forces were trying to "build a bridgehead for an attack" on Kostyantynivka, an important logistical hub for the Ukrainian army. Russia on Saturday accused Ukraine of delaying the swap of prisoners of war and returning the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers, although Ukraine denied those claims. Russia said on Sunday it was moving bodies towards the border. US President Donald Trump on Thursday likened the war to a fight between young children and indicated he might have to let the conflict play out. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he did not think Ukraine's leaders wanted peace, after accusing them of ordering a bombing in Bryansk, western Russia, that killed seven people and injured 115 a day before talks in Turkey. Ukraine, which has not commented on the attack on a Bryansk bridge, has similarly accused Moscow of not seriously seeking peace, citing as evidence Russian resistance to an immediate ceasefire. Russia is demanding international recognition of Crimea, a peninsula annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, and four other regions of Ukraine that Moscow has claimed as its own territory. Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from all of them. Russia controlled 113,273sq km, or 18.8 per cent, of Ukrainian territory as of June 7, according to the Deep State map. That is an area bigger than the US state of Virginia. The areas under Russian control include Crimea, more than 99 per cent of the Luhansk region, more than 70 per cent of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, all in the east or southeast, and fragments of the Kharkiv and Sumy regions in the northeast Putin told Trump on Wednesday he would have to respond to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia's bomber fleet and the bombings of the railways. The US believes Putin's threatened retaliation against Ukraine over its attacks has not happened yet in earnest and is likely to be a significant, multi-pronged strike, US officials told Reuters. Russia says its forces have advanced to the edge of the east-central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk amid a public row between Moscow and Kyiv over peace negotiations and the return of thousands of bodies of soldiers who fell in the war. Amid talk of peace, the war is stepping up with Russian forces grabbing more territory in Ukraine and Kyiv unfurling high-profile drone and sabotage attacks on Russia's nuclear-capable bomber fleet and, according to Moscow, on railways. Russia, which controls a little under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has taken more than 190sq km of the Sumy region of eastern Ukraine in less than a month, according to pro-Ukrainian open source maps. Now, according to the Russian defence ministry, units of the 90th Tank Division of the Central Grouping of Russian forces have reached the western frontier of Ukraine's Donetsk region and are attacking the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region. "The enemy does not abandon its intentions to enter the Dnipropetrovsk region," Ukraine's Southern Defence Forces said on Telegram. "Our soldiers are courageously and professionally holding their section of the front, disrupting the occupier's plans. "This work does not stop for a minute." The pro-Ukrainian Deep State map showed Russian forces very close to the Dnipropetrovsk region, which had a population of more than three million before the war, and advancing on the city of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region from several directions. A Ukrainian military spokesman, Dmytro Zaporozhets, said Russian forces were trying to "build a bridgehead for an attack" on Kostyantynivka, an important logistical hub for the Ukrainian army. Russia on Saturday accused Ukraine of delaying the swap of prisoners of war and returning the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers, although Ukraine denied those claims. Russia said on Sunday it was moving bodies towards the border. US President Donald Trump on Thursday likened the war to a fight between young children and indicated he might have to let the conflict play out. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he did not think Ukraine's leaders wanted peace, after accusing them of ordering a bombing in Bryansk, western Russia, that killed seven people and injured 115 a day before talks in Turkey. Ukraine, which has not commented on the attack on a Bryansk bridge, has similarly accused Moscow of not seriously seeking peace, citing as evidence Russian resistance to an immediate ceasefire. Russia is demanding international recognition of Crimea, a peninsula annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, and four other regions of Ukraine that Moscow has claimed as its own territory. Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from all of them. Russia controlled 113,273sq km, or 18.8 per cent, of Ukrainian territory as of June 7, according to the Deep State map. That is an area bigger than the US state of Virginia. 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