Seemingly unfazed by President Donald Trump's 50-day ultimatum to end the fighting, Russia launched hundreds of drones and missile strikes on six Ukrainian regions overnight, officials in the country said.
A child was among at least two people killed and 25 people were injured in the strikes in northern, central and southern Ukraine, according to a statement on Telegram from the Ukrainian air force and data collated by regional military administrations.
The large-scale, long-range attacks targeted energy infrastructure, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X. Power was cut for 80,000 families in his hometown of Kryvyi Rih and other locations in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine's largest private energy company DTEK said on the Telegram app.
The attacks came hours after Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart not to target Moscow. It followed a report by the Financial Times citing two people familiar with the conversation that he had encouraged Zelenskyy to step up attacks deep inside Russia.
NBC News has not independently confirmed the Financial Times’ reporting, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said that Trump “was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing.”
Trump, who has previously lavished praise on Vladimir Putin while scorning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Monday gave the Russian president 50 days to agree to a peace deal. During a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House, he also said that he would slap 100% tariffs on any country that buys Russian goods.
At the same time, he said, the United States would sell “top-of-the-line weapons” including Patriot air defense missiles, to NATO allies — including the much-demanded Patriot missiles — so that they can be used in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Trump said that some of the vaunted missile systems had been shipped to Ukraine. “They’re coming in from Germany,” he said, adding that NATO members would “pay us back for everything.”
However, the 50-day window has been criticized by some European officials and experts, who have asked why Trump is giving additional time to Putin, who has repeatedly stated his desire to subjugate Ukraine.
And there was no letup in Russian attacks on Ukraine overnight as it bombarded several cities with around 400 drones and an Iskander ballistic missile, Ukraine’s air force said.
“Russia does not change its strategy,” Zelenskyy said Wednesday in a post on Telegram, a day after a strike in his hometown in central Ukraine. “In order to effectively counteract this terror, we need a systematic strengthening of protection: more aircraft, more interceptors, more determination to make Russia feel our answer.”
Kremlin officials largely shrugged off Trump's call to reach a ceasefire agreement in 50 days, and on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Washington was hardly providing weapons to Ukraine if the European Union was paying for it.
“If you promise to provide weapons, but say that someone else will pay for them, it is not you who actually provided them, right?” she told reporters.
