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Russia has carried out a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine following President Trump’s decision to suspend a planned peace summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: Yesterday, President Trump announced that his planned summit with President Putin in Budapest had been abruptly canceled, noting he did not want to “waste time” on a meeting that was unlikely to produce real progress toward peace. The decision came shortly after a tense phone call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which was intended to finalize the details of the meeting. According to officials on both sides, the talks broke down when Russia refused to consider a ceasefire based on freezing the current front lines, instead insisting on territorial concessions from Ukraine as a precondition for negotiations.
What’s going on now: Russia launched a larger-than-usual aerial assault on Ukraine overnight, using 405 drones and 28 missiles in one of the most extensive attacks in recent weeks. Ukrainian air defenses managed to intercept 333 drones and 16 missiles, but some penetrated the country’s airspace, causing widespread destruction. The attack struck 10 different regions, with a heavy focus on Kyiv and Kharkiv, damaging energy infrastructure and triggering emergency power outages across multiple areas.
At least 13 people were killed, including a 12-year-old girl and a six-month-old baby who died alongside their mother when a drone strike ignited their home in the Brovary district near Kyiv. A 40-year-old man was also killed when a drone slammed into a kindergarten in Kharkiv, where multiple children were present at the time. In Kyiv’s Dniprovskiy district, a drone strike on a 16-story building sparked a fire that killed two people and injured more than 25 others, including at least four children.
In response, Ukraine carried out a series of counterstrikes deep into Russian territory, including a massive strike on a chemical plant in Russia’s Bryansk region that produces materials used in munitions. Additional Ukrainian strikes targeted a mechanical plant in Saransk and an oil refinery in Dagestan, marking the continuation of Kyiv’s broader campaign to disrupt Russia’s military production capabilities.
