Ukraine reports that Russia has launched its largest drone assault since the full-scale invasion began, targeting several regions, including Kyiv, where one person was killed.
By 08:00 Sunday (05:00 GMT), Ukraine’s air force said 273 drones had been launched, hitting the central Kyiv region, as well as Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk in the east.
It explained that among the drones were Shahed attack drones, with 88 intercepted and 128 going astray “without negative consequences.”
The attack came a day before a scheduled call between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid US calls for a ceasefire.
Leaders from Germany, Britain, France, and Poland are set to meet virtually with Trump before his conversation with Putin on Monday.
Friday’s face-to-face talks in Turkey, the first between Russia and Ukraine in over three years, resulted only in a prisoner swap deal.
Ukrainian officials said the strikes demonstrate Moscow’s unwillingness to seek peace despite international pressure.
“For Russia, the Istanbul negotiations are just a pretence. Putin wants war,” said Andriy Yermak, a top aide to the Ukrainian president.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Pope Leo at the Vatican on Sunday following the pontiff’s inauguration, and later held a brief discussion with US Vice President JD Vance in Rome.
One of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, Poland, has said it is no longer supplying weapons to its neighbour, as a diplomatic dispute over grain escalates.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland’s focus was instead on defending itself with more modern weapons.
Poland has already sent Ukraine 320 Soviet-era tanks and 14 MiG-29 fighter jets and has little more to offer.
However, the remarks coincide with high tensions between the two neighbours.
On Tuesday, Poland summoned Ukraine’s ambassador over comments made by President Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations after Poland, Hungary and Slovakia extended a ban on Ukrainian grain.
Mr Zelensky said it was alarming how some of Ukraine’s friends in Europe were playing out solidarity “in a political theatre – making a thriller from grain”. Warsaw denounced his words as “unjustified concerning Poland, which has supported Ukraine since the first days of the war”.
Mr Morawiecki was interviewed on Wednesday night by the private Polsat news TV channel hours after the Ukrainian ambassador had been summoned to the foreign ministry in Warsaw in response to the Ukrainian leader’s speech.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” the prime minister said.
He was adamant Poland was helping Ukraine defeat the “Russian barbarian” by maintaining a military hub, but would not agree to Poland’s markets being destabilised by grain imports, Polish news agency Pap reported.
“Our hub in Rzeszow, in agreement with the Americans and Nato, is fulfilling the same role the whole time as it has fulfilled and will fulfil.”
Poland’s military has depleted its own military by about a third through transfers to Ukraine and is in the process of replacing it with modern Western-produced hardware.
Arms exports to Ukraine will not stop completely as Polish manufacturer PGZ is due to send about 60 Krab artillery weapons in the coming months.
Asked about the prime minister’s comments, Polish state assets minister Jacek Sasin told Radio Plus on Thursday that “at the moment it is as the prime minister said – in the future we will see”.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov has confirmed that he is leaving his post.
Mr Reznikov had led the ministry since before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Mr Reznikov’s dismissal on Sunday, saying it was time for “new approaches” in the defence ministry.
Rustem Umerov, who runs Ukraine’s State Property Fund, has been nominated as Mr Reznikov’s successor.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Mr Reznikov confirmed that he had submitted his resignation letter to the country’s parliament.
Ukrainian media has speculated that he will become Kyiv’s new ambassador in London, where he has developed good relations with senior politicians.
The 57-year-old has become a well-known figure since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Internationally recognised, he has regularly attended meetings with Ukraine’s western allies and played a key role in lobbying for additional military equipment.
But his dismissal has been anticipated for some time. Last week, Mr Reznikov told reporters he was exploring other positions with the Ukrainian president.
According to local media, the former defence minister said that if Mr Zelensky offered the opportunity for him to work on another project he would probably agree.
Ukrainian defence advisor Yuriy Sak told the BBC that Mr Reznikov spearheaded the transformation of the ministry, laying the groundwork for future NATO membership.
“His legacy is that he has convinced ministers of defence around the world that the impossible is possible,” he said in reference to Mr Reznikov’s successful lobbying of foreign governments for arms.
But experts have observed that the cabinet reshuffle is unlikely to lead to any major change in Ukraine’s battlefield strategy, with Gen Valery Zaluzhny – the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces – overseeing the campaign.
Mr Reznikov’s dismissal comes amid a wider anti-corruption drive in Mr Zelensky’s administration, with weeding out graft in the state seen as essential to Ukraine’s desire to join Western institutions like the EU.
Russian missiles struck the city of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 12 people in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called “an open act of terrorism“.
Ukraine’s emergency services said there were “12 dead, including one baby, and 25 wounded” and dozens of rescue workers were fighting to put out a large blaze sparked by the strikes.
The news came as EU foreign and justice ministers prepared to meet in The Hague for a conference on alleged Russian war crimes.
Zelensky said he would be addressing the meeting via video call and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is set to attend.
“Every day, Russia kills civilians, kills Ukrainian children, carries out missile attacks on the civilian facilities where there is no military target. What is this, if not an open act of terrorism?” the Ukraine leader said in a statement on social media.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Russia has launched an assault to seize the eastern Donbas region.
Moscow bombarded cities with rocket and artillery fire on Monday and in a video address Mr Zelensky said that the battle “for the Donbas has begun”.
Ukraine’s top security official, Oleksiy Danilov, said that Russia tried to break through the Ukrainian front lines in the region.
The offensive has been long-expected after Russia failed to seize Kyiv.
Russia initially appeared to want to capture major Ukrainian cities and topple the government.
But after facing stiff resistance, Russian defence officials said that its main objectives in the “first stage of the operation” had been “generally accomplished” and its forces were moved from areas around the capital.
They announced plans to redirect the focus of the invasion towards the “liberation” of the Russian speaking Donbas region.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has portrayed the invasion as an attempt to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine, something Ukraine and its allies dismiss as a ruse for an unprovoked attack.
Throughout Monday, Russia unleashed a barrage of rocket and artillery fire on a number of eastern areas, with eight civilians killed in the city of Kreminna in Luhansk and in the Donetsk area.
Seven people were killed and eleven more were injured in four Russian strikes in western Lviv, a city that has largely been spared the attacks seen elsewhere in Ukraine.
The governor of the Luhansk region said the situation was “hell”, with constant fighting being reported in some cities.
In Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, the regional governor said evacuations of civilians were taking place in areas where intense clashes are expected.
Russian defence officials said it its forces had hit hundreds of military targets in Ukraine on Sunday night, including 16 military facilities in the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, as well as a port in Mykolayiv in the south and east of Ukraine.
Speaking in a video message on Monday night, Mr Zelensky said that he and his forces “will defend ourselves” and pledged “not give up anything Ukrainian”.
“A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive,” he added, but said that Ukraine’s forces will fight on “no matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight”.
Moscow claimed last month that it controlled 93% of Luhansk and 54% of Donetsk and its forces are expected to try and encircle the remaining Ukrainian troops in the region.
But they face a protracted fight with some of Kyiv’s most battle-hardened troops. Ukraine is believed to have between 40-50,000 soldiers in the Donbas, many of whom have spent years fighting against Russian-backed separatists forces in the region.
Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said the assault marked “the second phase of the war” and assured Ukrainians that their forces could hold off the offensive.
“Believe in our army, it is very strong,” he said.
The change in Russia’s objectives was set out by President Vladimir Putin during a speech last week, where he announced that his aim was “to help the people who live in the Donbas, who feel their unbreakable bond with Russia”.
The Pentagon’s press secretary, John Kirby, cautioned Russia could be “setting the conditions for future offensive operations” and officials in Kyiv warned that the new Russian offensive does not mean that Moscow has ended its attacks on other parts of Ukraine.
“Putin hasn’t removed the goal to destroy us as a state and our political leadership,” Mr Danilov said in an interview with Ukrainian TV.
Russia continues to target the south-eastern city of Mariupol, which would allow its troops to complete a land bridge between the occupied Crimean peninsula and forces in separatist-held regions of eastern Ukraine.
Officials in Kyiv claimed Russian war planes were preparing to drop five-tonne bombs on the Azovstal plant where the final Ukrainian holdouts are sheltering.
