'Vladimir, STOP!': Trump condemns Russian strikes on Kyiv as death toll rises to 12
by Jane Moore, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/jane-moore/ · TheJournal.ieLAST UPDATE | 19 hrs ago
US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has taken to social media to condemn the deadly Russian aerial attack on Kyiv and urge president Vladimir Putin to “get a peace deal done”.
A barrage of missiles and drones rained down on Kyiv at around 1am local time, killing 12 people in the worst attack on the capital in months.
Through the night, rescue workers were poring through the rubble of destroyed buildings and tackling blazes in apartment blocks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was on a trip to South Africa, announced he would return to Ukraine immediately after meeting the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa.
He also strengthened calls for an end to aerial strikes against his country which he said must be stopped “immediately and unconditionally”.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump said he was “not happy” with the Russian strikes on Kyiv, saying they were “not necessary” and “very bad timing”.
“Vladimir, STOP!” Trump wrote. “5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”
It comes hours after Trump claimed that Zelenskyy has been more difficult to deal with than Putin while speaking in a press-packed Oval Office.
“I think we have a deal with Russia,” he told reporters. “I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelenskyy. So far, it’s been harder.”
Trump also lashed out at the Ukrainian president yesterday in a post on Truth Social for his refusal to accept Russia’s occupation of the Crimean peninsula as a condition for peace.
Zelenskyy ‘has nothing to boast about’
He wrote: “Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognise Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula in 2014 and then backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Trump went on to attack Zelenskyy’s handling of the conflict with Russia, claiming: “He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov voiced his agreement today with the US President’s remarks, stating: “This completely corresponds with our understanding, which we have been saying for a long time.”
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The latest attacks on Kyiv throw yet more doubt on already fraught US efforts to push Russia and Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire.
Ukraine has been battered by Russian aerial attacks through the war, but deadly strikes on Kyiv, which is better protected by air defences than other cities, are less common.
Loud blasts sounded over the Ukrainian capital at around 1am (11pm Irish time) after air raid sirens rang out across Kyiv, AFP journalists on the ground said.
Russia fired at least 70 missiles and 145 drones at Ukraine between late last night and early this morning, the main target being Kyiv.
“As of 5.30pm, the death toll in Kyiv’s Sviatoshinsky district has risen to 12,” Ukraine’s state emergency services said on social media, adding that the number of wounded had risen to 90.
Russia said it had targeted Ukraine’s defence industry, including plants that produced “rocket fuel and gunpowder”.
Olena Davydiuk, a 33-year-old lawyer in Kyiv, told AFP she saw windows breaking and doors “falling out of their hinges” during the barrage.
“People were being pulled out of the rubble. They said that there were dead people there too,” she added.
In Sviatoshinsky, west of Kyiv, an AFP journalist saw a body bag with one of the victims lain out on a strip of grass.
A woman sat on a small folded-out chair stroking the arm of another person killed in the attack, the body covered in a striped blue sheet.
Putin has yet to respond to Zelenskyy’s offer to completely halt air attacks on civilian targets and last month rejected a US-Ukrainian call for a full and unconditional ceasefire.
This afternoon, France’s President Emmanuel Macron said Putin was the only person holding up an “unconditional ceasefire” deal for Ukraine, adding that US anger should be directed at him.
Putin must ‘stop lying’ about wanting peace
Zelenskyy “has said yes” to it, Macron told journalists during a visit to Madagascar. “If President Putin says yes, the weapons will fall silent tomorrow, lives will be saved.”
“The only thing to do is for President Putin to finally stop lying,” he said, adding that the Russian leader was telling US negotiators “he wants peace” but then continuing “to bombard Ukraine”.
In a statement this morning, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said: “I condemn Russia’s latest missile and drone strikes on Kyiv that has left nine civilians dead and injured many more. The targeting of civilians has to stop. It’s time for a just and sustainable peace in Ukraine.”
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Junior Minister of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, TD Thomas Byrne, is currently in Odesa, Ukraine. Today, he attended the opening of the first completed school underground shelter.
In his remarks at the opening, Byrne said that it was an “outrage” that such a structure had to be built.
“Underground shelters have become a necessity, as a direct result of the illegal and unjustified full-scale invasion, launched by Russia,” he said. “Russia’s appalling aggression has had a particularly severe impact on Ukrainian children.”
Byrne assured those in attendance that Ukraine had Ireland’s full support.
Speaking in South Africa before he left, Zelenskyy said the large-scale missile attack on Kyiv was designed to put “pressure” on the United States.
“Russia understands that Ukraine is standing up, defending its rights and (it) is putting pressure on our people. It is also putting pressure on America,” he told journalists. “This is what I also link today’s attack with.”
He also insisted that Kyiv would not change its position on Crimea. “We do everything that our partners have proposed, only what contradicts our legislation and the Constitution we cannot do,” he said.
Ukraine has repeatedly said it will not cede Crimea under any settlement with Moscow.
Russia has launched some of its most deadly and brazen aerial strikes at Ukraine over the last month – defying Trump’s push to bring about a rapid end to the bloodshed.
A ballistic missile strike on the centre of northeastern city of Sumy killed at least 35 on 13 April.
An attack on Zelenskyy’s home town of Kryvyi Rig in early April killed at least 19 – including nine children after a missile slammed into a residential area near a children’s playground.
Separately, Russia’s defence ministry reported downing 87 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 45 over Crimea.
Additional reporting from Keith Kelly and © AFP 2025
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