A sustained Russian drone barrage — at least 800 unmanned aerial vehicles fired across roughly 20 Ukrainian regions — killed at least six people and wounded dozens more on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, in what he described as one of the longest continuous attacks of the four-year war. The assault began in midmorning and stretched for hours in the capital Kyiv, the western city of Lviv near Poland, and the Black Sea port of Odesa, among other population centers, as Moscow sought to overwhelm Ukraine’s air-defense systems, Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.
“Our soldiers are defending Ukraine, but Russia’s obvious goal is to overload air defenses,” Zelenskyy wrote. He cautioned that a cruise and ballistic missile attack could follow the drone barrage, which he called “one of the longest, massive Russian attacks against Ukraine.”
In the Rivne region west of Kyiv, three people were killed in a drone strike, according to Oleksandr Koval, head of the regional military administration. Drone debris fell in an open area of Kyiv’s Obolonskyi district with no casualties, city officials said. Explosions were heard across the capital earlier in the day.
The attack also stirred a sharp diplomatic reaction from neighboring Hungary. Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose new government is moving away from the Moscow-friendly posture of predecessor Viktor Orbán, said he had summoned the Russian ambassador.
“The Hungarian government strongly condemns the Russian attack on Transcarpathia,” Magyar told journalists. Foreign Minister Anita Orbán would ask the ambassador “when Russia and Vladimir Putin plan to finally end this bloody war,” Magyar added. Zelenskyy quickly thanked Magyar on social media: “Thank you for your compassion and strong position!”
The relentless air assault undercut recent comments by both Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump suggesting a peace deal could be at hand. Trump said Tuesday he believed Moscow and Kyiv will soon reach an agreement, calling the war’s end “really getting very close.” Putin said in a speech last weekend that his invasion was possibly “coming to an end.” Neither leader provided evidence or details, and U.S.-led diplomatic efforts over the past year have stalled over core issues, including whether Russia gets to keep seized Ukrainian territory and what security guarantees might deter a fresh invasion.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated Wednesday that Moscow’s terms are unchanged: Ukraine must pull its troops from the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia — that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but has not fully captured. “At that point, a ceasefire will be established, and the parties can calmly engage in negotiations, which, incidentally, will inevitably be very complex and involve a lot of important details,” Peskov said.
Zelenskyy, speaking in Bucharest, Romania, to representatives of countries on NATO’s eastern flank, vowed to keep pressure on Russia through sanctions, military operations, and diplomacy. “Sanctions are working, our long-range (drone and missile) capabilities are working, and every form of pressure is working,” he said.
On the battlefield, the correlation of forces has shifted in Ukraine’s favor. Ukraine’s domestically developed long-range drones and missiles have disrupted energy facilities and manufacturing deep inside Russia. The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its forces intercepted and destroyed 286 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula, the Azov Sea, and the Black Sea.
On the 1,250-kilometer front line, Russian advances have slowed each month since October, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The Washington-based think tank said Russia’s spring offensive has floundered, with Russian forces recording a net loss of territory in April — the first such reversal since 2024.
“Not only are Ukrainian defensive lines holding, but Ukrainian forces have managed to contest the tactical initiative in several areas of the front line even as Russia continues to lose disproportionate amounts of manpower to achieve minimal gains,” the ISW said Tuesday.
Zelenskyy linked the day’s violence directly to the attention paid to other global crises, appearing to reference the ongoing war in Iran. “It is important to support Ukraine and not remain silent about Russia’s war,” he said. “Every time the war disappears from the top of the news, it encourages Russia to become even more savage.”