Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump tells Zelensky US could take ownership of energy plants after new Putin airstrikes

Vladimir Putin’s promises to Donald Trump to pause Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have lasted just a few hours.

Footage is emerging online showing the devastation wrought by Russia’s latest missile and drone strikes.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired at least two ballistic missiles, four anti-aircraft guided missiles and 145 attack drones at targets across Ukraine.

The city of Slovyansk was hit by a Russian missile, knocking out the power for around 100,000 people.

In Sumy, in the northeast, two Russian drones hit a medical facility just after 1am local time, according to Ukraine’s emergency services. The facility was partially destroyed. As rescuers arrived to help 22 patients trapped in the building, emergency services say Russia fired five more drones.

The blast wave also damaged the premises of a children’s medical facility, local emergency services reported.

In Kyiv, two people were injured, including a 60-year-old man after drone debris fell on the city.

Below, you can see the aftermath of the Sumy strikes, posted by Ukraine’s emergency services.

Sir Keir Starmer has spoken with Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss "progress President Trump had made towards a ceasefire in talks with Russia", Downing Street said on Tuesday evening.

Giving a readout of a call between the UK prime minister and the Ukrainian president, a Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The prime minister spoke to President Zelensky this evening.

"They discussed progress President Trump had made towards a ceasefire in talks with Russia.

"President Zelensky updated on the situation on the front line and the prime minister reiterated the UK's unwavering support."

Since returning to the White House in 2025, US President Donald Trump has dramatically reshaped US policy toward Russia, adopting a markedly softer stance on Vladimir Putin and the ongoing war in Ukraine. This approach has included cutting military aid to Ukraine, and pressuring Kyiv to accept unfavourable terms to end the fighting.

Trump is also weakening America’s negotiating position by repeatedly and prematurely signalling the concessions the US is willing to make.

Historically, Russia has responded to strength, not appeasement. As US diplomat and historian George Kennan famously stated in his 1946 Long Telegram, the Soviet Union understood only the language of power. He was proven right – throughout and since the Cold War, Western concessions have often invigorated rather than calmed Russian aggression.

Christo Atanasov Kostov writes:

The Trump administration has slashed a government-funded initiative which tracked the mass deportation of children from Ukraine, Democratic lawmakers have said.

As part of its widespread slashes to foreign aid and US government programmes, the White House has ended the initiative at Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab (Yale HRL).

Researchers have lost access to vast amounts of information about some 30,000 children taken from Ukraine, including satellite imagery and other data.

In a letter to secretary of state Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent, the Democratic lawmakers say they believe the data has been “permanently deleted” in a move which would have “devastating consequences”

The Trump administration took “$26 million of US taxpayers money used for war crimes data and threw it into the woodchipper, including the dossiers on all the children”, a person familiar with the programme told Reuters.

"If you wanted to protect President Putin from prosecution, you nuke that thing. And they did it. It’s the final court-admissible version with all the metadata," the source said.

Two people were killed and 18 were injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine over the past day, regional authorities have said.

A 45-year-old woman was killed and four people were injured in the northeastern Kharkiv region, after a Russian first-person-view drone hit a car on the highway, governor Oleh Syniehubov reported.

An attack on Uhroidy village in the Sumy region killed one person, injured three, and damaged a two-story house, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Further injuries were reported in the eastern Donetsk region, southern Kherson region, and the northern region of Kyiv.

A 60-year-old man was injured in a Russian drone attack in the Kyiv region overnight.

The attack also damaged several houses in the capital region, governor Mykola Kalashnyk said in a statement early today.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia launched more than 40 drones against Ukraine in the hours following the call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian military said on Wednesday its air defence units shot down 72 of the 145 drones launched by Russia overnight.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have agreed to shackle Ukraine after hours of talking on the telephone over ceasefire terms, which won’t work but are intended to further divide Ukraine and Europe from the White House.

There has not been a Russian agreement to a ceasefire. But if there is to be one, then all foreign military and intelligence assistance has to stop.

That means the Anglo-French efforts to create a coalition of the willing to back Ukraine and support a long-term peace with military muscle must stop. US assistance must stop, again. All intelligence sharing, by both the US and other Nato members, must also be ended.

Ukraine, Russia has demanded, must be hog-tied, muzzled and blinded before substantial talks can begin.

World affairs editor Sam Kiley writes: