President Donald Trump condemned Vladimir Putin after Russia launched hundreds of missiles and drones against Ukraine this weekend.
The Ukrainian air force said 298 drones and 69 missiles struck Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions on Saturday, killing at least 12 people, injuring 60, and damaging more than 80 residential buildings.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night that the Russian president had gone “absolutely crazy” and that “something has happened to him.”
“He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I’ve always said that he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia,” Trump wrote.
Saturday’s 367 launches were the biggest single-night attack of the war. Russia deployed another 355 drones and 9 missiles against Ukraine on Sunday night, its air force said on Monday.
Danylo Antoniuk/Anadolu/Getty Images
Trump also used his post to criticise Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying he was “doing his country no favors by talking the way he does.”
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” he wrote.
Zelenskyy has called on Europe and the US to impose more economic sanctions on Russia.
“The silence of America, the silence of others in the world only encourages Putin,” he wrote on Telegram.
“Every such terrorist Russian strike is reason enough for new sanctions against Russia.”
The head of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service said that Putin still wanted to take full control of four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporihzhia, and Kherson.
In comments made in a local interview reported by BBC News, General Oleh Ivashchenko said Russia was “playing for time in order to regroup” by engaging in peace talks.
He said Moscow may not be able to achieve its territorial aims because it was “exhausted technologically, economically and diplomatically.”
