Russia\u2019s latest aerial barrage against targets in Ukraine is not dampening expectations by U.S. President Donald Trump that he can broker a deal to end the fighting between Moscow and Kyiv. Ukrainian officials Friday accused Russia of launching more than 200 overnight missile and drone strikes against Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure across a broad swath of the nation, hitting targets in five regions while damaging residential buildings and injuring residents. But Trump, speaking to reporters Friday in the Oval Office, said he takes Russian President Vladimir Putin at his word when Putin says he wants peace. \u201cI believe him. I think we’re doing very well with Russia,\u201d Trump said, acknowledging that for the moment \u201cthey’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s doing what anybody else would do,\u201d the U.S. president said of Putin. \u201cI think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.\u201d Trump also expressed continued frustration with Kyiv. \u201cI’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. They don\u2019t have the cards,\u201d he told reporters. When asked if the United States would consider giving Ukraine additional air defenses, Trump said it depended on Ukraine. \u201cI have to know that they want to settle. I don\u2019t know that they want to settle,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they don’t want to settle, we’re out of there because we want them to settle.\u201d Other U.S. officials, meanwhile, have pushed back against the notion that Trump\u2019s tactics to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table \u2014 which has included a pause on military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv \u2014 have made Ukraine more vulnerable. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News late Thursday that the pause on intelligence sharing is designed only to prevent Ukraine from launching offensive operations against Russia. \u201cAny intelligence going toward defending Ukraine against attacks coming into their country would continue,\u201d Gabbard said. A U.S. defense official Friday confirmed to VOA that there has been no pause on intelligence that would allow Ukraine to defend itself, adding that Ukraine also maintains access to Starlink, the satellite internet system owned by Trump ally Elon Musk. As for the overnight attack by Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on social media that many of the drones were taken out by antiaircraft defenses. He said that for the first time, French-made Mirage fighter jets were deployed in air defense, and that U.S-made F-16s were also used. Zelenskyy, in a statement on his X social media account Friday, said that despite the Russian attacks, Kyiv is committed to seeking peace. \u201cIntense work with President Trump\u2019s team has been ongoing at various levels \u2014 numerous calls,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe topic is clear \u2014 peace as soon as possible, security as reliably as possible. Ukraine is fully committed to a constructive approach.\u201d In a separate statement on Telegram, however, Zelenskyy expressed frustration with Moscow. \u201cEvery day, new Russian attacks and reality itself prove that it is Russia that must be forced to make peace \u2014 to stop the war, to engage in real diplomacy,\u201d he said, according to a translation of his comments. The latest barrage of Russian missiles and the responses from the U.S. and Ukraine come as Zelenskyy plans to travel to Saudi Arabia Monday for meetings with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss a possible ceasefire with Russia. The meeting would be the first between Zelenskyy and U.S. officials since the Ukrainian leader\u2019s contentious White House meeting last week with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, as reporters looked on. Earlier this week in a letter sent to Trump, Zelenskyy said the way the meeting went was \u201cregrettable\u201d and Ukraine was \u201cready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible.\u201d VOA\u2019s Patsy Widakuswara and Jeff Custer contributed to this report. Some information was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia\u2019s latest aerial barrage against targets in Ukraine is not dampening expectations by U.S. President Donald Trump that he can broker a deal to end the fighting between Moscow and Kyiv. Ukrainian officials Friday accused Russia of launching more than 200 overnight missile and drone strikes against Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure across a broad swath of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":29607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobbinghood.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}