War in Ukraine: Russia launches its largest drone and missile attack since February 2022

Russian strikes continue to escalate. Ukraine claimed on Wednesday that Russia launched its largest drone and missile attack since the start of the invasion in February 2022 overnight, amid a diplomatic stalemate.

This new round of attacks comes after US President Donald Trump announced Monday that he was sending "more weapons" to Kiev to defend itself against Russian bombings intended to support Moscow's advance on the eastern front. Ukraine had already been the target of an unprecedented Russian drone attack on the night of July 3-4.

"Four places" affected

Russia fired 728 drones and 13 missiles, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, which claimed to have intercepted 711 drones and destroyed seven missiles. Ukraine reported "four locations" hit, without specifying the exact damage. "The main target of the attack was the Volyn region, the city of Lutsk," several hundred kilometers from the front, it said.

Eight people were injured in the regions of Kyiv, Sumy (northeast), Zaporizhzhia (south) and Kherson (south), according to local authorities. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced "an attack revealing" Russia's refusal to agree to a ceasefire.

He once again called for "severe sanctions" against Moscow and its economy, particularly the oil sector, "which has fueled Moscow's war machine for more than three years." "All those who want peace must act," he insisted.

His right-hand man, Andrii Yermak, considered it "very revealing that Russia carried out this attack at the very moment when the United States publicly announced that it would supply us with weapons." On the Russian side, the Defense Ministry said it had shot down 86 Ukrainian drones during the night.

Still far from an agreement

The Kremlin expressed its displeasure on Tuesday with Donald Trump's arms promises, which came barely a week after his administration reversed its decision, asserting that any such delivery would "encourage the continuation of hostilities."

For months, Ukraine has been demanding more air defense systems from its Western allies, including the United States, to limit Russian strikes against its cities and towns in a war that has already left tens of thousands of civilian and military dead on both sides.

Because despite the pressure exerted by Donald Trump, who has been getting closer to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin since February, Moscow and Kiev are sticking to their positions and remain very far from an agreement, whether it be a truce or a longer-term settlement. No third round of talks between Russians and Ukrainians has yet been announced, after two fruitless meetings in Turkey in mid-May and early June .

Diplomatic status quo

Faced with this diplomatic status quo, Ukrainian leaders accuse Moscow of "buying time," at a time when the Russian army, superior in numbers and weapons, is still gaining ground in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this week, it even claimed the capture of a first town in the Dnipropetrovsk region (central-east).

Vladimir Putin knows that time is on the side of his army, which still occupies nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory. He also recently denied Ukraine's sovereignty again, claiming to consider "the Russian and Ukrainian peoples as one."

"In this sense, all of Ukraine belongs to us," he declared on June 20. These remarks – illustrating the divide between the two camps – angered Kyiv, which called them "cynical" and saw them as evidence of "total disregard" for peace efforts.