BY VOLODYMYR YURCHUK AND ELISE MORTON
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a sweeping drone assault and airstrikes across Ukraine early Sunday, killing at least four people, officials said, after U.S. President Donald Trump cast doubt over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the war.
Three people died and four were wounded in airstrikes on Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Another person died and a 14-year-old girl was wounded in a drone attack on the city of Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region, which was hit for the third consecutive night, Gov. Serhii Lysak said.
The attacks came hours after Russia claimed to have regained control over the remaining parts of the Kursk region that Ukrainian forces seized in a surprise incursion in August 2924. Ukrainian officials said the fighting in Kursk was still ongoing.
Trump said Saturday he doubts Putin wants to end the more than 3-year-old war, expressing new skepticism a peace deal can be reached soon. Only a day earlier, Trump had said Ukraine and Russia were “ very close to a deal.”
“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Trump wrote in a social media post as he flew back to the U.S. after attending the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican, where he met briefly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump also hinted at further sanctions against Russia.
The Trump-Zelenskyy conversation was the first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders since their heated Oval Office meeting at the White House on Feb. 28.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday the coming week would be “very critical,” and that the U.S. would need to “make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in.”
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about possible concessions to Russia, Rubio emphasized the need to be “grownups and realistic.”
“There is no military solution to this war. The only solution to this war is a negotiated settlement where both sides are going to have to give up something they claim to want and are going to have to give the other side something they wish they didn’t,” he said.
Russia fired 149 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks, the Ukrainian air force said, adding that 57 were intercepted and another 67 jammed.
One person was wounded in drone attacks on the Odesa region and one other was hurt in the city of Zhytomyr. Four people were also wounded in a Russian airstrike on the city of Kherson on Sunday, local officials said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses shot down five Ukrainian drones in the border region of Bryansk, as well as three drones over the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Five people were wounded when Ukrainian forces shelled the city of Horlivka in the partially occupied Donetsk region, said the Russian-installed Mayor Ivan Prikhodko.
Morton reported from London.
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