KYIV (Reuters) -Russia attacked the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk with drones overnight, the city mayor said on Tuesday, calling it a sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin does not want peace.
The reported assault came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump met European leaders and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Washington, saying the U.S. would help guarantee Ukraine’s security in any deal to end Russia’s war there.
After the meeting on Monday, Trump said he telephoned Putin and begun arranging a meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy, to be followed by a trilateral summit among the three presidents, with the aim of reaching a peace deal.
“At the very same time when Putin was assuring Trump over the phone that he seeks peace, and when President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was holding talks at the White House with European leaders about a just peace, Putin’s army launched yet another massive attack on Kremenchuk,” Vitalii Maletskyi, mayor of the city that lies in the Poltava region, said on the Telegram.
“Once again, the world has seen that Putin does not want peace — he wants to destroy Ukraine,” he said.
The overnight attack on Ukraine was the largest so far in August with Russia launching 270 drones and 10 missiles, according to the Ukrainian air force.
Maletskyi said scores of blasts shook the city, targeting energy and transport infrastructure, leaving hundreds of people in the Poltava region without power.
The Ukrainian air force said it downed 230 drones and six missiles but recorded strikes at 16 locations.
Poltava Governor Volodymyr Kohut said that the attack damaged administrative buildings of a local energy infrastructure operation.
“Fortunately, there were no casualties,” Kohut said on Telegram. He said that in the Lubny district nearly 1,500 residential and 119 commercial customers were left without power.
A Tuesday morning drone attack by Russia on Ukraine’s Chernihiv region also damaged infrastructure with power cuts reported in parts of the northern region, according to Governor Viacheslav Chaus.
There was no immediate comment from Russia. Both sides have been targeting infrastructure key to the military in their strikes during the war on each other’s territory, including energy infrastructure.
Russia said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s overnight drone attack sparked fires at an oil refinery and a hospital roof in the Volgograd region.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Anastassia Malenko in Kyiv; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Tom Hogue and Kim Coghill)
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