President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the phone for more than an hour, signaling that “immediate peace” likely will not come in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace.”Trump added that Putin indicated to him that Russia will “have to respond to the recent attack” on Russian airfields that Ukraine confirmed over the past weekend.
Ukraine launched a large-scale drone attack targeting Russian bases deep inside the country over the weekend in a move that surprised Moscow. The bases, some of which were located as far as Siberia, hosted bombers that are capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Ukrainian officials have said that more than 40 bombers, or about a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, were damaged or destroyed in attacks on Sunday. Russia disputed the figure and said that only a few planes were hit in the strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the attack as a “brilliant operation” that took more than “a year and a half” to carry out, according to a post on social media platform X.