- Russia fired “355 Shahed-type drones”, nine cruise missiles.
- Improved Missile Area of Ukraine would be dangerous: Kremlin.
- Trump calls Putin “crazy” in rarely devoted the Russian leader.
Russia fired its biggest drone barrier ever on Ukraine, said authorities on Monday, only hours after Donald Trump called Vladimir Putin “Crazy” and warned Moscow risked new sanctions if it held up his deadly bombing.
The US president has tried to mediate an end to the three -year war, but has failed to extract major concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated negotiations and more phone calls between him and Russia’s president.
For three consecutive nights, Russia has pummed Ukraine with large drone attacks, saturated its air defense and killed at least 13 people on Sunday, officials said.
Russia fired “355 Shahed-type drones” including lure birds, in the biggest drone attack of the invasion between Sunday night and early Monday, as well as nine cruise missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that “there were no longer any range restrictions” on weapons supplied by Western allies to Ukraine, enabling Kyiv to attack “military positions in Russia”.
It was not immediately clear when the decision was made, nor which countries had changed their policy.
The Kremlin said that any Western decision to lift a number of boundaries of weapons delivered to Ukraine would be “dangerous” and “in odds” with peace efforts.
In a rare decomposition of the Russian leader, Trump said on social media late Sunday: “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin from Russia, but something has happened to him. He’s gotten completely crazy!”
“I’ve always said he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe it turns out to be right, but if he does, it will lead to Russia’s downfall!”
Earlier, Trump told journalists he was “not happy” about Russia’s attack on Ukraine and was “absolutely” considering increasing sanctions against Moscow.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped that Trump’s anger over Moscow translated “into action” and that the US president realized that Putin was not ready for peace.
‘Critical moment’
The Kremlin played down Trump’s criticism and said Putin is taking action “necessary to ensure Russia’s security”.
“This is a very critical moment that is full of emotional stress for all as well as emotional reactions,” the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks showed that Russia had a feeling of “impunity.”
“The increase in Russian strikes should be met with increased sanctions,” he said on social media.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed cities and cities, and spurred the greatest crisis in relations with the West since the Cold War.
Kyiv did not report any deaths from the latest drone attack, but said Russian shelling had killed a civilian man in the northern Sumy region in the last 24 hours.
The Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat warned that it was difficult to counter the large number of drones that Moscow fired.
“We need rational and cheaper ways to shoot them down,” he told Ukrainian TV.
A Ukrainian military source told AFP That Kyiv “somehow fought” with available air defense functions and that there was no need to panic “.
“To maintain our defense, we need supplies of Western weapons,” the source said, adding that the supply of Patriot missiles as well as NASAM’s medium air defense and iris-t short range systems were especially important to Ukraine.
Russia said it had caught two border towns in the Sumy region where it has fitted an offensive for weeks.
Diplomatic effort
Diplomatic efforts to end the war have increased in recent weeks, with Russian and Ukrainian officials holding direct conversations in Istanbul earlier this month for the first time in three years.
They sent back every 1,000 people over the weekend in their biggest prisoner exchange ever, while Russia said it was preparing a document that outlined its peace conditions.
Several potential Pow exchanges depend on further conversations with Ukraine, Peskov journalists told Putin’s meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, adding that Moscow was still working on a ceasefire Memorandum.
Moscow has repeatedly rejected proposals for a 30-day ceasefire from Kyiv and its western allies while sanding forward on the front line.
Instead, Putin offered to work at a memorandum that said conditions for a ceasefire that triggered criticism from Ukraine to stop the negotiations.
Ukraine’s SBU Security Service said on Monday that it detained more people, including a teenager, to act as “informants” for Moscow and led Russian strikes in the country.
