Kyiv – A Russian missile and drone barrage on Ukraine killed six people in and around the capital Kyiv overnight, including two children, proving once again that Vladimir Putin isn’t feeling “enough pressure” to end the war against his neighbors, Ukraine’s leader said.
The wave of strikes left at least 17 other people wounded and triggered power cuts across the country, Ukrainian authorities said, hours after President Trump’s efforts to settle the nearly four-year war appeared to hit another roadblock. The White House said Tuesday that a planned meeting between Mr. Trump and Putin in Hungary — announced by the U.S. leader less than a week earlier — was cancelled.
A White House official said there were “no plans” for such a meeting in the “immediate future,” after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a “productive call,” but determined that another in-person presidential summit was “not necessary.”
Mr. Trump told reporters later Tuesday that he didn’t want to “have a wasted meeting.”
“Another night proving that Russia does not feel enough pressure for dragging out the war,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media following the latest overnight Russian attack on his country. “As of now, 17 people are known to have been injured. Unfortunately, six people were killed, among them two children.”
AFP journalists in Kyiv heard multiple explosions during the night and saw a pillar of smoke rising above the capital. The strikes also targeted the country’s energy infrastructure, leaving thousands without heating and electricity across Ukraine as cold fall temperatures start to bite, according to the energy ministry.
“Due to a massive missile and drone attack on the energy infrastructure, emergency power outages have been introduced in most regions of Ukraine,” it said in a statement.
Russia said it had intercepted 33 Ukrainian drones overnight without reporting any substantial damage.
Mr. Trump had said last week that he would meet Putin for peace talks in the Hungarian capital Budapest within two weeks, following what he called a productive two-hour phone call with the Russian leader. This week, however, Mr. Trump said that while he believed Ukraine “could still win” the war, “I don’t think they will.”
The president has pressured Zelenskyy to give up Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, 78% of which Mr. Trump said Russia’s invading forces already control, during talks at the White House on Friday, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.
Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly rejected those calls to give up any land, and many of America’s European allies have warned against appeasing Russia by allowing it to unilaterally seize part of a sovereign nation.
France, Germany and Britain have lead the charge to rally behind Ukraine, rejecting the idea of Kyiv giving up territory and the White House’s repeated suggestion that the fighting should be frozen along the current front lines. Ukraine’s European partners, under the guises of the “coalition of the willing,” are due to meet again in London on Friday to discuss support for Kyiv’s war effort.
In a statement following the overnight attack, Zelenskyy said “Russian words about diplomacy mean nothing as long as the Russian leadership does not feel critical problems.”
Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarize the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.
Kyiv and its European allies say the war is an illegal land grab that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and widespread destruction.
