Russia launched its largest drone assault on Ukraine since the start of the war, just hours after a leaked audio recording revealed Donald Trump claimed he once told Vladimir Putin he would “bomb Moscow” if Russia attacked Ukraine.
According to Ukraine’s Air Force, 728 drones and 13 missiles were fired overnight in a massive wave of attacks targeting the country’s west and north. It shattered previous records and forced Poland to scramble fighter jets to protect its airspace.
“This is a demonstrative attack,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram. “It comes at a time when there have been so many attempts to achieve peace and cease fire, but Russia rejects everything.”
Most of the drones were intercepted—718 destroyed, according to Ukrainian officials—but some got through. One person was killed by falling debris in Khmelnytskyi, and a woman in Brovary near Kyiv was hospitalized with injuries.
In the Volyn region, where much of the attack focused on the city of Lutsk, officials described a relentless bombardment. “Virtually everything was flying towards Lutsk,” said Ivan Rudnitskyi, the region’s military head.
The massive assault came just hours after an audio recording leaked in which President Trump said he warned Putin that any attack on Ukraine would trigger a U.S. response that included bombing Moscow.
“If you move against Ukraine, I will bomb Moscow,” Trump reportedly told Putin, according to the recording. “And he believed me like 10%, but that’s all you needed.”
In the same leaked audio, Trump claimed Putin “feared” him and never would have launched a full-scale invasion if he were in office.
Hours later, Russia responded with a record-setting drone barrage.
On Monday, Trump had already made headlines by criticizing Putin’s repeated stalling over peace talks and vowing to send more military aid to Kyiv. “We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting. “He’s very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
He added: “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to—they have to be able to defend themselves.”
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed later that the Department of Defense, at Trump’s direction, would send more defensive weapons to Ukraine to “ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace.”
Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights issued a landmark ruling Wednesday, finding that Russia committed major violations of international law since its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz also declared diplomacy with Moscow dead: “This government, led by me, will do everything in its power” to stop Russia’s destruction of Europe’s democratic order, he told lawmakers.
Ukraine’s security services said they also arrested two Chinese nationals accused of spying on the country’s Neptune missile production, claiming one was caught “red-handed” while handing over classified materials.
The timing of Russia’s drone blitz—immediately after Trump’s leaked threat to “bomb Moscow”—has raised questions about whether Putin was sending a message of his own, with firepower.
