The assault began around 2 a.m. on May 11, with Russian forces deploying 108 Shahed-type attack drones and decoy UAVs from multiple directions, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
"Think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that will be saved as this never ending 'bloodbath' hopefully comes to an end... I will continue to work with both sides to make sure that it happens."
U.S. State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce called for "concrete proposals from both sides" in order for Washington to "move forward" in peace negotiations.
"If they speak to each other in Russian, he doesn't know what they are saying," one Western official told NBC News. Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, called Witkoff's approach "a very bad idea."
Tougher sanctions "should be applied to (Russia's) banking and energy sectors, targeting fossil fuels, oil, and the shadow fleet," the leaders of Ukraine, the U.K., France, Germany, and Poland said in a joint statement.
"Russia is ready for negotiations without any preconditions," Putin claimed in an address marking the end of the three-day Victory Day ceasefire. He invited Ukraine to begin talks in Istanbul on May 15.
While serving as a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, called the full-scale war "a true invasion, imperialist in nature, where Russia seeks to conquer territory for reasons of power."
Speaking to CNN on May 10, Peskov commented on the latest ceasefire proposal from Ukraine and Europe, responding that Russia needs to "think about" it, but is "resistant" to pressure.
Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv on May 10, President Volodymyr Zelensky rebuked the idea of a demilitarized zone in the war and emphasized the importance of first securing a ceasefire.
Russian military service members inspect a railway convoy between Moscow and the Nizhniy Novgorod oblasts.
Russia currently has nearly 122,000 troops deployed within 200 kilometers of the Ukrainian border, according to Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council secretary.
Russian manpower deployed within 400 kilometers is estimated at 143,500, the official said on Dec. 22.
Ever since Russia launched its undeclared war on Ukraine in 2014, the situation along the Ukrainian-Russian border line has never been calm, but the Ukrainian leadership "has the situation under control," according to Danilov's statement.
"We understand what's going on over there," Danilov said. "And in the event of escalation -- and this can't happen in a moment, for instance just today -- we need to get prepared and we keep track of what's happening."
Russia caused the latest security crisis in the region by concentrating over 100,000 troops along Ukraine's border and the Russian-occupied territories starting in November.
The rapid buildup raised alarms in Kyiv and in the West over a possible large-scale invasion, which, according to Ukrainian and Western intelligence, might be launched in January or February. The Kremlin publicly advanced threats and demands against Ukraine's NATO membership.
In spite of multiple warnings from the U.S. and European powers and U.S. President Joe Biden's Dec. 7 talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia has made no moves to de-escalate.
On Dec. 17, the Kremlin published two draft treaties it allegedly suggested to the U.S. and NATO. The pacts demanded for the West to withdraw its military presence from Central and Eastern Europe and provide formal guarantees that the Alliance would not expand in the region, especially into Ukraine.
Meanwhile, according to reports in the U.S. media, the Biden administration is considering aid to Ukrainian forces that might wage guerilla warfare against the Russian military in the event of an occupation.
Illia Ponomarenko was a defense and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent in 2021-2023. He has reported about the war in eastern Ukraine since the conflict’s earliest days. He covers national security issues, as well as military technologies, production, and defense reforms in Ukraine. Besides, he gets deployed to the war zone of Donbas with Ukrainian combat formations. He has also had deployments to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an embedded reporter with UN peacekeeping forces. Illia won the Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship and was selected to work as USA Today's guest reporter at the U.S. Department of Defense.
