Russia unleashes largest drone assault of war, setting government building ablaze
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 17 hours ago
- 5 min read
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Russia attacked Ukraine on Sunday with the largest drone assault so far in the war, Ukrainian authorities said, damaging a key building in the heavily guarded government district of the capital for the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 805 Iranian-designed Shahed exploding drones and decoys across the country, the latest in a relentless offensive that has continued unabated despite the Trump administration’s efforts to mediate peace talks. Before Sunday’s assault, the largest attack was July 9, when Russia launched 728 drones.
Russia also fired 13 cruise and ballistic missiles in the latest volley, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said nine missiles and nearly 60 drones had evaded air defenses and made impact.
President Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who despite appeals from the White House has given little indication that he has softened any of his maximalist demands for a settlement. In the meantime, Russian forces have continued to bombard Ukraine, including targeting European and American assets in the capital, Kyiv, and killing civilians.
Speaking to reporters Sunday in Washington, Trump said he was prepared to move to a second phase of sanctions on Russia for failing to reach a ceasefire deal. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Putin, including a few days ago when he appeared with other authoritarian leaders in China, but has not taken action even as Russia has escalated its bombardment of Ukraine.
Despite imposing “secondary sanctions” on India and other countries that do business with Russia, Trump’s threats to punish Russia itself have been so far empty, with deadlines he’s set for action coming and going without consequence.
At least five people around the country were killed Sunday, according to Ukrainian authorities, including a woman and child in Kyiv.
“Once again, the Kremlin is mocking diplomacy, trampling international law and killing indiscriminately,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, wrote on social media as EU officials issued seemingly coordinated statements condemning Sunday’s assault.
Rising on a hill and crisscrossed by leafy, cobblestone streets, the government district in Kyiv lies at the center of rings of air defenses. But early Sunday, flames leaped from the windows of the building where the Cabinet of Ministers convenes, and firefighters flew in a helicopter to douse the blaze.
Smoke billowed from the large, colonnaded building, a landmark in the city, near parliament and the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Such killings now, when real diplomacy could have already begun long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “It has been repeatedly said in Washington that sanctions will follow a refusal to talk.”
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, whose offices are in the Cabinet building, later posted pictures of the aftermath showing a charred corridor, broken doors and dangling electrical wires.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said that debris from a drone shot down by air-defense systems appeared to have started the fire.
Other cities around the country — including Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Kremenchuk and Odesa — also came under attack. One person was killed and 17 others were injured in Zaporizhzhia, while deaths were also reported in Sumy and Chernihiv, according to local authorities. Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in south-central Ukraine, and Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea, both sustained damage. In Kremenchuk, a drone hit a bridge over the Dnieper River, halting traffic.
Sunday’s assault came three days after European leaders — including Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France — met to propose a framework for security guarantees in postwar Ukraine, assuming a ceasefire or peace settlement is reached.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the strikes were “part of a clear pattern of escalation.”
“Every Russian attack is a deliberate choice and a message: Russia does not want peace,” she wrote on social media, adding that Kyiv’s allies would continue to support Ukraine’s defense industry and tighten sanctions on Moscow.
Russia has been ramping up its drone attacks since last fall, setting records nearly every month for the number of weapons launched.
While Ukraine has been able to shoot down about 80% of the drones launched by Russia, the weapons are cheap to manufacture, and Moscow has relied on large volleys that can still kill people and damage infrastructure.
The recent ramp-up in the scale of drone attacks has coincided with Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal, which began in February with phone calls to Zelenskyy and Putin. Through last fall and into this year, new Russian drone factories in the cities of Izhevsk and Yelabuga came online, according to military analysts, increasing Moscow’s capacity to build drones. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, said Friday that Russia now produces about 2,700 Shahed-type drones per month. Those details could not be independently confirmed.
Ukrainian air force statistics illustrate the significant increase. In the second half of 2024, Russia launched 8,740 drones — but in the first half of this year, Russia launched 21,317 drones, according to the air force.
In the latest flurry of diplomacy aimed at stopping the war, Trump met with Putin at a summit in Alaska last month and with Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House soon after. Russia said it would halt its invasion if Ukraine retreated from territory in the country’s Donetsk region, which Russia has tried and failed to fully seize since it started the war in 2022.
Ukraine proposed an unconditional ceasefire in March, but Russia has demanded concessions on territory, a cap on the size of Ukraine’s postwar army and a ban on treaties with allies to safeguard against a future invasion. It has continued a campaign of exploding drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, civilian infrastructure, military sites and other targets, despite the international calls for a pause.
With peace efforts foundering, Trump has repeatedly threatened to impose sanctions on Russia and issued deadlines — the latest of which passed last week — but not yet followed through.
On Sunday, Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he expected there to be a “lot of talk today and tomorrow about the level of sanctions and the timing of sanctions.”