London – Russia launched more than 100 drones to Ukraine after the conclusion of a phone call between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, said the Ukraine Air Force, and while the world expected what Trump said it would be an immediate resumption of peace talks between Moscow and kyiv.
The Ukraine Air Force wrote on Telegram that its forces knocked down 35 of the 108 Russian drones launched into the country during the night, with another 58 stuck or neutralized in another way while they were in flight. The Air Force reported soil damage to four Ukrainian regions.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said its forces knocked down eight Ukrainian drones during the night.
The exchanges of cross -border drones occur near the night and have increased in size and sophistication throughout the 3 -year war. The flood of Monday night occurred despite Trump’s latest guarantee that a peace agreement between the two parties is possible, after a phone call with Putin that lasted two hours.
“I think something is going to happen,” Trump told journalists at the Oval office after the call. “It is a very, very large ego involved, I tell you, great egos involved. But I think something is going to happen. And if I thought President Putin did not want to finish this, he wouldn’t even be talking about that because he would get me out.”
In this photograph of the pool distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, the Russian president Vladimir Putin shows during an event in Sochi, Russia, on May 19, 2025.
Alexander Kazakov/Pool/AFP through Getty Images
Despite the failure of peace conversations to date, including a chaotic meeting between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators in Istanbul, Turkey, last week, Trump still seemed confident in success.
On a publication of his Truth social website on Monday, Trump said that Russia and Ukraine “immediately” will begin negotiations towards a high fire. KyIV has repeatedly requested a full 30 -day break to the fight to facilitate peace conversations. The Kremlin has so far dodged the proposal.
When asked if he had asked Putin to meet him during Monday’s call, Trump replied: “Of course.”
“I said: ‘When are we going to finish this, Vladimir?'” Trump said. “I said: ‘When are we going to end this bloodshed, this bloodbath?’ It is a bloodbath.
Putin’s own statement showed signs of concessions. “Russia’s position is clear,” the president said in a statement to the media after the call. “Eliminating the fundamental causes of this crisis is what matters most to us,” Putin said, according to a Kremlin reading.
Trump’s threats to new sanctions to Russia do not seem to have moved the Kremlin away from its maximalist war objectives, which essentially equals Ukrainian capitulation.
These demands include the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian regions, plus the retention of Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, the demilitarization of kyiv, a permanent block in Ukrainian adhesion to NATO and the “desnazification” of the country, a nebula demand based on the false representation of Russia of the Ukrainian government as an extreme dictature.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with whom Trump also spoke on Monday, has tried to present kyiv as ready and willing to make peace, instead of frame Putin as the key obstacle to Trump’s desired treatment.
“This is a decisive moment,” Zelenskyy wrote in a telegram post on Monday. “Now the world can see if its leaders have the ability to guarantee the end of war and the establishment of a real and lasting peace.”
“I confirmed to President Trump that in Ukraine we are ready for a high full and unconditional fire, such as the United States, in particular, he has been talking,” he continued.
A member of a voluntary mobile air defense unit is next to a machine gun during a Russian drone attack in the kyiv region, Ukraine on May 18, 2025.
Stanislav Kozliuk/Reuters
“It is important not to dilute this offer. If the Russians are not ready to stop the murders, there must be stronger penalties for that. The pressure on Russia will encourage you to make a real peace, this is obvious to all in the world,” he said.
“We must ensure that Russia is prepared to celebrate such productive negotiations,” Zelensyy wrote. “It is very important for all of us that the United States does not distance itself from negotiations and achieves peace, because the only one interested in this is Putin.”
If Putin drags or blocks real negotiations, Zelenskyy said: “The United States and the entire world behaves accordingly, including the answer with additional sanctions. Russia must end the war that began, and can do it any day. Ukraine is always ready for peace.”
