Russia Unleashes One of Its Largest Drone Barrages of the Ukraine War

Russia targeted Ukraine on Sunday with one of its largest drone bombardments of the war, an apparent show of force only a day before President Trump is expected to talk with President Vladimir V. Putin as Mr. Trump pushes Russia to accept a cease-fire deal.

The drone barrage, in which an estimated 273 exploding drones and decoys were recorded in the skies across Ukraine, killed a woman and injured several other people.

It came hours after Mr. Trump said on Saturday that he would talk with Mr. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who has agreed to an unconditional and immediate cease-fire, as well as the leaders of the NATO alliance. Mr. Putin has dragged his feet on agreeing to any temporary truce, adding preconditions that he knows Ukraine will not accept.

On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky met in Rome with Vice President JD Vance in their first encounter since a contentious White House meeting in February. The Sunday sit-down, which also included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, took place after they attended Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass.

The meeting appeared to be an attempt to show that any animosity between Mr. Vance and Mr. Zelensky had dissipated. The White House said in a statement that the meeting focused on the current status of negotiations toward a cease-fire and a lasting peace.

Mr. Trump also met with Mr. Zelensky in private at the Vatican before the funeral of Pope Francis on April 26 and later spoke warmly of the Ukrainian leader.

Ukrainian officials have argued that Russia’s relentless bombardments, like the drone attacks on Sunday, are evidence that Mr. Putin does not want to find a path to peace.

The call between Mr. Trump and the Russian leader, which the Kremlin confirmed on Saturday, would be their second publicly acknowledged conversation over Ukraine since Mr. Trump took office in January.

Many people in Moscow celebrated the first call, which took place in February, as a victory, because Mr. Trump appeared to accept the Kremlin’s view that Russia and the United States should settle Ukraine’s fate directly between themselves. It also emerged that Mr. Trump had called Mr. Putin before Mr. Zelensky.

Mr. Trump had boasted that he could resolve the war in Ukraine before even taking office and the administration’s policy has largely been directed at pressuring Ukraine while offering inducements to Moscow.

Even before any negotiations began, the Trump administration took NATO membership for Ukraine off the table, suggested a willingness to recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and even briefly suspended American military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

The administration has also yet to provide Ukraine with a single new military assistance package, leaving more than $3 billion worth of equipment already approved by Congress on the shelf.

In a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s approach to the war, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget A. Brink, has spoken out for the first time about why she resigned her post last month. She said she could not “in good faith” carry out a policy that “put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia.”

“Peace at any price is not peace at all — it is appeasement,” Ms. Brink wrote in an article published Friday in The Detroit Free Press.

The first direct talks in some three years between Russian and Ukrainian officials on Friday brought the two sides no closer to agreement, with Moscow making maximalist demands that Kyiv would never agree to, including giving up land Russia has failed to capture, according to multiple officials who were in the talks.

At the same time as the diplomatic efforts were underway, the pace of Russian assaults across the eastern front in Ukraine has been increasing as the Kremlin sets the stage for large-scale offensive operations this summer, according to the Ukrainian military and Western officials.

While Russia has advanced only slowly and at a cost, its forces have in recent days gained ground south of Kostiantynivka, a city in the Donetsk region that is a central logistics hub for Ukrainian forces. The Russians have had it in their sights for years.

The drone barrage on Sunday was mainly directed at Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, and antiaircraft fire lit up the skies over the capital as air defense teams scrambled to counter the assault. Over the course of some nine hours, the Ukrainian Air Force said, 88 drones were intercepted, while 128 others vanished from radars.

A 28-year-old woman in the capital region was killed and three more people were injured, including a 4-year-old child.

While the impact of the barrage appears to have been limited, it was part of a pattern of escalating aerial bombardments, with the swarms growing larger the longer the war has raged. It is now common for waves of more than 100 drones to attack towns and cities several times a week. On Feb. 23, the Ukrainian Air Force recorded 263 drones in the skies.

Ukrainian military intelligence warned earlier in the year that Russia’s goal was to be able to attack with swarms of more than 500 long-range strike drones on a regular basis.

At the same time, Russia continues to upgrade the weapons, outfitting some with jet engines and Starlink navigation systems. That allows them to fly higher and farther while carrying deadlier payloads, including thermobaric munitions.

The relentless drone assaults are intended, in part, to exhaust Ukraine’s air defenses so that larger bombardments that often feature cruise missiles and ballistic missiles have a greater chance of inflicting maximum damage.

After meeting with the new pope and American officials in Rome, Mr. Zelensky reiterated his readiness for a cease-fire.

“Pressure is needed against Russia until they are eager to stop the war,” Mr. Zelensky said on social media, posting a picture of himself and Mr. Vance smiling warmly as they sat with Mr. Rubio and other officials in Rome.

Pope Leo, who has offered the Vatican as a venue for peace talks, spoke on Sunday about “martyred Ukraine.”

“The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another,” Leo said.

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