By Lex Harvey and Kosta Gak

(CNN) — At least one person has been killed after Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the beginning of its invasion, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, just hours after US President Donald Trump pledged more military support for Kyiv and accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of throwing “bullsh*t” over peace talks.

The massive aerial assault involved 728 drones and 13 missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said, eclipsing the previous record number of 539 drones, set on July 4, by hundreds – but it was largely repelled, with the damage limited.

One civilian in the western Ukrainian district of Khmelnytskyi sufffered fatal injuries from debris from a Shahed drone, local authorities said.

“This is a demonstrative attack, and it comes at a time when there have been so many attempts to achieve peace and cease fire, but Russia rejects everything,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

“Our partners know how to apply pressure so that Russia will be forced to think about ending the war, not new strikes. Everyone who wants peace must act.”

The barrage, which mainly targeted the city of Lutsk, in northwestern Ukraine, was so intense it caused Poland’s military to scramble aircraft in its airspace. It comes after weeks of intensifying aerial strikes on Ukraine by Russia.

“Last night, our region was again subjected to a mass attack,” Ivan Rudnitskyi, the head of the military administration in Volyn region, home to Lutsk, said on Telegram. “Virtually everything was flying towards Lutsk.”

Ukraine’s Air Force said it destroyed 718 of the drones. One woman was hospitalized with chest injuries in the city of Brovary, near Kyiv, its mayor said.

Ukraine launched 86 drones towards Russia overnight, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Moscow’s scaled up assault on Kyiv follows a remarkable 48 hours in the White House, where Trump vented his anger about Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s lack of commitment to a peace deal and pledged more support for Ukraine.

“We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting. “He’s very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

On Monday, Trump promised to restore military aid to Ukraine, after a senior White House official told CNN last week the US would pause some weapons shipments to Kyiv, including air defense missiles.

Kyiv urgently needs more US-made Patriot interceptor missiles to repel Russian attacks.

“We’re going to send some more weapons (to Ukraine),” Trump said on Monday evening. “We have to — they have to be able to defend themselves.”

“They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons,” Trump added. “Defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard.”

A Pentagon spokesman later said that “at President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform Trump before authorizing the weapons pause last week, according to five sources familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Germany’s chancellor pledged to continue Berlin’s support for Ukraine as he said that the diplomatic means for resolving the war are “exhausted.”

“If a criminal regime, with military violence, openly questions the existential right of an entire country and sets out to destroy the democratic political order of the entire European continent, this government, led by me, will do everything in its power to prevent exactly this,” Friedrich Merz told lawmakers in Germany’s lower house of parliament.

Landmark ruling

Europe’s top human rights court on Wednesday morning found that Russia committed major international law violations in Ukraine, in a landmark ruling.

The court found that Russia had committed a pattern of human rights violations in Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. The inter-state cases were brought by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia.

Also on Wednesday, Ukraine said it had arrested two Chinese nationals accused of spying to gather information on the production of Kyiv’s Neptune missile systems and take the information back to China. The Secret Service of Ukraine said it caught one of them “red-handed” while he was handing over secret documents.

The-CNN-Wire
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