Vladimir Putin unleashed his largest drone attack on Ukraine to date, hours after Donald Trump vowed to send more aid to Kyiv and accused the Russian president of giving him “bulls--t.”
The aerial assault saw 728 drones and 13 missiles launched upon Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, surpassing the previous record of 539 drones set just a week ago on July 4. At least one civilian was killed in the attack, local officials said.
“This is a telling attack – and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X.
Calling for more sanctions on Russia, he added: “Our partners know how to apply pressure in a way that will force Russia to think about ending the war, not launching new strikes. Everyone who wants peace must act.”
The assault follows an extraordinary shift in rhetoric from the White House this week, which saw President Trump pledge to provide additional military support to Ukraine and consider new sanctions.
“We get a lot of bulls--t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all the time but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Monday saw Trump promise to restore arms shipments to Ukraine after the Pentagon made the surprise decision to cut them off last week, startling military leaders in both D.C. and Kyiv. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before deciding to pause the shipments, according to CNN.
“We’re going to send some more weapons (to Ukraine),” Trump announced on Monday evening. “We have to—they have to be able to defend themselves.”
“They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons,” he added. “Defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard.”
On Tuesday, leaked audio obtained by CNN captured Trump bragging to donors on the campaign trail in 2024 that he told Putin he would bomb Moscow if Russia ever invaded Ukraine.
“With Putin, I said ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m gonna bomb the s–-t out of Moscow,” Trump said in the leaked recording. “‘I’m telling you, I have no choice—the public.’ So he goes like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ He said, ‘No way.’ And I said, ‘Way.’”
Trump claimed Putin believed “10 percent” of his threat, which was enough to deter him, and added he had said the same thing to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping if he ever invaded Taiwan.
“Ten percent is all you need. In fact, five percent would have been okay, too. And we never had a problem. We would have never had a problem,” Trump can be heard saying.
Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, on Wednesday responded to the CNN report by saying he couldn’t confirm or deny whether Trump had made the threat. “Whether it is fake or not, we do not know either,” Peskov said, according to Reuters. “There is a lot of fake news these days.”
