Russia launches largest attack after Trump-Putin call
Russia has launched its 'largest-ever' drone and missile attack on Ukraine just hours after President Donald Trump shared a 'disappointing' phone call with his Russian counterpart, during which 'no progress' was made to end the war.
The attack – Russia's largest aerial strike since the start of the three-year invasion – saw Moscow fire a record 550 drones and 11 missiles at Ukraine on Thursday night into Friday local time, according to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 23 people were wounded in the Russian barrage, with air alerts beginning to echo out across the country as reports of the Presidents' call emerged.
First responders work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Kyiv region, Ukraine, Friday, July 4, 2025. Picture: Ukrainian Emergency Service/AP
'Yet again, Russia is showing it has no intention of ending the war and terror,' Mr Zelensky wrote on social media.
'All of this is clear evidence that without truly large-scale pressure, Russia will not change its dumb, destructive behaviour,' he added, urging the US in particular to ramp up pressure on Moscow.
A representative of Ukraine's air force told Ukrainian media that the attack was the largest of the Russian invasion.
Mr Zelensky said the air alerts had begun echoing out across the country as reports of the presidents' call emerged, Picture: Ukrainian Emergency Service/AP
'Complete disregard'
Taking to social media after the attack, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha slammed Mr Putin for 'his complete disregard', saying Kyiv experienced an 'absolutely horrible and sleepless night'.
'Right after Putin spoke with President Trump. And he does it on purpose. Enough of waiting!' he wrote on X.
'Putin clearly shows his complete disregard for the United States and everyone who has called for an end to the war.'
In Kyiv, AFP journalists saw dozens of residents of the capital taking shelter in a metro station.
Overnight, Russia attacks have escalated over recent weeks as concerns mount in Kyiv over the continued delivery of US military aid, which is key to Ukraine's ability to fend off the drone and missile barrages.
An AFP tally shows Moscow launched a record number of drones and missiles at Ukraine in June, as direct peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow appeared to stall.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin for showing 'complete disregard'. Picture: Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool/AP
'Very disappointed': Trump said he made no progress with Putin on call
The strike came hours after Mr Trump said he made no progress with Mr Putin on ending the war during a phone conversation on Thursday, which left him 'very disappointed'.
'It was a pretty long call, we talked about a lot of things including Iran, and we also talked about, as you know, the war with Ukraine. And I'm not happy about that,' the US President told reporters before boarding Air Force One for a flight to Iowa.
Asked if he had moved closer to a deal to end the war, Mr Trump replied: 'No, I didn't make any progress with him at all.'
He later told reporters on his return to Washington from Iowa: 'I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there.'
'I don't think he's looking to stop and that's too bad,' he added.
President Donald Trump said he 'didn't make any progress with him at all'. Picture: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Mr Trump's view of the call was unusually bleak. After most of his previous five calls with Mr Putin since returning to power in January, he has given optimistic reports of progress towards a deal.
But he has shown increasing frustration with Mr Putin after an early pivot towards the Russian leader.
In recent weeks, he knocked back Mr Putin's offer to mediate in the Iran-Israel conflict, telling him to focus on the Ukraine war instead.
The wreckage of cars following mass Russian drone and missile strikes on Kyiv on July 4, 2025. Picture: Oleksii Filippov/AFP
In Moscow, the Kremlin said the call lasted almost an hour and said that Putin had insisted he would not give up on Russia's goals.
'Our president said that Russia will achieve the aims it set, that is to say the elimination of the root causes that led to the current state of affairs,' Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.
'Russia will not give up on these aims.'
A representative of Ukraine's air force told Ukrainian media that the attack was the largest of the Russian invasion. Picture: Oleksii Filippov/AFP
Moscow has long described its maximalist aims in Ukraine as getting rid of the 'root causes' of the conflict, demanding that Kyiv give up its NATO ambitions.
Mr Trump's grim assessment came as US-led peace talks on ending the more than three-year-old conflict in Ukraine have stalled, and after Washington paused some weapons shipments to Kyiv.
Moscow's war in Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people since it invaded in February 2022, and Russia now controls large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Originally published as 'Very disappointed': Putin launches largest attack on Ukraine since start of war after call with Trump
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
2 hours ago
- News.com.au
Yes, condemn the anti-IDF rappers. But then you don't get to ignore it when others do the same thing
Before we deal with more complicated matters let's acknowledge, without caveat, the numbskullery of a British rap duo called 'Bob Vylan'. First of all, on a note that carries no substance but bugs me nonetheless: Bob Vylan? Really? Is that ... is that allowed? We're just stealing the names of other musicians, now, and changing one letter? By that logic I could go around calling myself Chakira, and indulging in a little bum wiggle here and there, and committing tax fraud, and label it art. (That's a touch too harsh on Shakira. She did give us the second-catchiest World Cup anthem of my lifetime, and the raciest Super Bowl half time show since Janet Jackson, both of which warrant no small dividend of respect. Pay your taxes though, babe.) As for the real Vylans of the piece here. While performing at the Glastonbury music festival in Britain, the pair led chants of 'death, death to the IDF', referring to Israel's military, which were broadcast live by the BBC, and thus beamed around the world. As a general rule, surely we can agree that any sentence starting with 'death, death to' is heading in a very poor direction. 'Restraint, restraint from the IDF' may lack punch, but it also lacks any conceivable justification for, or incitement to, violence. Which is to say much of the indignation this week has been warranted. British police opened an investigation into the group, which is roughly in line with their treatment of other extreme rhetoric. Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned them. Their agent ditched them. Shows across Europe were cancelled. The US government revoked their visas, stressing that 'foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors'. (No word on whether hatred glorified by American citizens - say, members of Congress, or senior administration officials - deserves similar condemnation, but that's a whole other kettle of scalding hot water, and we shan't touch it today.) I'm not here to argue any of the backlash described above was wrong. It all ties into a broader question about how liberal societies should calibrate their restrictions on free speech, and across 34 years of life I have never yet encountered a perfect answer. You're fumbling around for the least objectionable border between irreconcilable rights. Not easy. You can sense the looming 'but'. I am here to wonder why these loathsome words, from a pair of formerly quasi-famous rappers - (I'm not quite deficient enough in self-awareness to call them nobodies) - are being treated as more outrageous, and worthier of action, than the daily, continuing tide of actual violence, and actual death, in Gaza. You don't go to any music festival in search of sophisticated views on foreign policy. There's a rawer form of humanity on display. So why is it that we seem, collectively, to care so much more, to be so more readily angry, about a chant at Glastonbury than the opinions, and decisions, of those privileged individuals who actually hold the power to shape what will happen in Gaza and Israel? The future tense there is deliberate. We all know what happened, past tense, on October 7 of 2023. We know of the innocent lives stolen, and the indelible trauma those horrors have inflicted on thousands of Israelis. We know civilians were dragged into the tunnels as hostages, where some remain all these months later. We know about the litany of other atrocities committed by Hamas, not just on that day, but for many years before it. We know it's a terrorist group whose existence hinges on an objective of genocide. We know it cynically uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, hiding in hospitals and neighbourhoods. And we recognise the cruel irony that follows, when Hamas condemns the deaths it goaded Israel into causing. So to banish any lack of clarity: a person who supports Hamas in Australia, or Britain, or America, or any other liberal nation, is insulting their own intelligence. We also know that, in this age of social media, the terrors of war are more easily witnessed and documented than ever before. Which makes the images from Gaza uniquely affecting. All these things we know. And not one of them gives Israel a carte blanche to do absolutely anything it likes in response. Not one renders all collateral damage acceptable. Not one frees Israel from the obligations of international law, or of basic morality. Not one strips all the women, children and innocent men in Gaza of their dignity and right to life. The responsibility of those with power is to consider what comes next; to build the best possible future they can. Not to seek vengeance for what came before. And this war ... what has it become, exactly? It started as a crime against Israeli civilians. Then it became a retaliatory mission, one of self-defence, whose stated aim was to root out Hamas. What is it now? Whole cities have been reduced to rubble. Some monumental number of the 2.2 million people who lived in Gaza are dead. And the survivors of this carnage live in tents, and walk kilometres to line up for food, ever fearful of gunshots from the soldiers above. Where does it stop? What is the objective? How does this end any other way than with the radicalisation of an entire new generation of Palestinians, and more decades of violence, and more despicable anti-Semitism rising across the world in a backlash to Israel's actions, and any prospect of a lasting peace being killed off for another lifetime? If you are genuinely angry, and genuinely horrified, by those words from Bob Vylan, then I ask this of you: as you read these quotes below, imagine the roles are reversed. Assess how you would react if a Palestinian said these things about the Israeli people. First is Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker in Israel's Knesset and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party. He described the Palestinians as 'subhumans'. And he called for all men in Gaza to be killed. 'Who is innocent in Gaza? 'Civilians' went out and slaughtered people in cold blood,' Mr Vaturi told the radio station Kol BaRama. Air quotes there implied by him, not me. 'They are outcasts, and no one in the world wants them.' He argued that Israel should 'separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza', and said the IDF was being 'too considerate'. 'The international community understands the residents of Gaza are not welcome anywhere.' Too considerate! One truly does shudder at the thought of an inconsiderate IDF. Here is Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. 'The humanitarian aid currently entering Gaza is an absolute disgrace,' Mr Gallant said just last week. 'What is needed in Gaza is not a temporary halt of the 'humanitarian' aid, but a complete cessation of it. 'Stopping the aid will quickly advance us toward victory.' That would be the aid which is currently the only thing feeding children who might otherwise starve to death. Give Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich some marks, at least, for brevity: 'Gaza will be entirely destroyed.' Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu said there were 'no uninvolved civilians' in Gaza. None. Among a population of more than two million. All of them are complicit, apparently. Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Zehut party in the Knesset, is mercifully not a government minister. He is, however, a man of questionable opinions. 'Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy,' said Mr Feiglin. 'The enemy is not Hamas, nor is it the military wing of Hamas. 'We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there. There is no other victory.' Look, I could keep going here. There is no shortage of material. And given the time, I could draw up a list of stunningly bloodthirsty language from Arab leaders as well. It's not all Israelis, nor is it all Arabs, nor is it all Palestinians, and that is part of the damn point here. Everywhere you look in this conflict, there's a refusal to recognise the humanity in other people. From the anti-Semites, you get a failure to distinguish between the actions of Israel's government and those of the Jewish people. And in the other direction, a failure to tell the difference between Hamas militants and the civilians, many of them small children for goodness' sake, whose bodies lie crushed amid the ruins. Perpetuating those attitudes will give us nothing more than pain and death, forever. Someone in a position of leadership needs to grow beyond them. Or you will be back here in 20 years reading the same rant, and I'll be back here in 40 years writing it again. After October 7, I made a point of watching the footage responsible news organisations would never publish. To call it harrowing would be a mockery of the word. Now the images that you, as a reader, will never see, are of Palestinian kids with their limbs blown off. Among other horrors. If you can muster fury for one, but not the other, then for the love of whatever god you believe in, do consider waking up. Consider the fact that everyone involved here is a human being, with the same inherent dignity. Consider the fact that, were you born in Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem, or Gaza, or the West Bank, you might be a victim, not a witness. The entire conflict is a catastrophe. It's repugnant. Every day it degrades us. So yes. Condemn the rappers. Cancel their shows. Prosecute them, if laws have been broken. But the next time a government official speaks of children as enemies, not from the stage at a music festival but from a place of real, substantive power, I expect your indignation to burn no less brightly.
Sky News AU
2 hours ago
- Sky News AU
President Donald Trump signs 'Big, Beautiful Bill' into law as United States celebrates Independence Day
President Donald Trump has signed his landmark 'Big, Beautiful Bill' into law on an historic Independence Day for the United States. The mega tax and spending bill cleared its last hurdle on Thursday after narrowly passing the US Congress with 218-214 votes. On Friday Trump staged an outdoor ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, where hundreds gathered in unison including White House aides, members of Congress, and military families, to support the President's landmark moment, following a tumultuous battle. Military jets soared overhead in salute as the President rejoiced in his victory. The stealth bombers and fighter jets resembled those that took part in the recent US strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran. After a speech that included boastful claims about the ascendance of America on his watch, Trump signed the bill, posed for pictures with Republican congressional leaders and members of his cabinet, and waded through the crowd of happy supporters. The controversial bill is expected to fund Trump's immigration crackdown, make his 2017 tax cuts permanent, and is expected to knock millions of Americans off health insurance. "I've never seen people so happy in our country because of that, because so many different groups of people are being taken care of: the military, civilians of all types, jobs of all types," Trump said at the ceremony, thanking House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune for leading the bill through the two houses of Congress. "So you have the biggest tax cut, the biggest spending cut, the largest border security investment in American history." The bill represents a dramatic realignment of the federal government's role in American life, shifting resources from the social safety net and investments in clean energy and reorienting them to finance trillions of dollars in spending on tax cuts. Despite concerns within Trump's party over the bill's hefty price tag and its hit to healthcare programs, in the end just two of the House's 220 Republicans voted against it, following an intense overnight standoff. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin predicted the law would cost Republicans votes in congressional elections in 2026. "Today, Donald Trump sealed the fate of the Republican Party, cementing them as the party for billionaires and special interests - not working families," Martin said in a statement. "This legislation will hang around the necks of the GOP for years to come. This was a full betrayal of the American people. Today, we are putting Republicans on notice: you will lose your majority." -With Reuters
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy discuss US weapons for Ukrainian defence
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has discussed air defences with his US counterpart, agreeing to work on increasing Kyiv's capability to "defend the sky" as Russian attacks escalate. He said in a message on Telegram he discussed joint defence production, as well as joint purchases and investments, with Donald Trump on Friday. Ukraine has been asking Washington to sell it more Patriot missiles and systems that it sees as key to defending its cities from intensifying Russian air strikes. Kyiv had warned that a decision by Washington to halt some shipments of weapons to Ukraine would weaken its ability to defend against Russia's strikes and battlefield advances. Germany said it was in talks to buy Patriot air defence systems to bridge the gap. One source briefed on the call said they were optimistic that supplies of Patriot missiles could resume after what they called a "very good" conversation between the presidents. US outlet Axios, citing unnamed sources, reported the call lasted about 40 minutes, and that Mr Trump told Mr Zelenskyy he would check what US weapons due to be sent to Ukraine, if any, had been put on hold. Mr Zelenskyy, speaking later in his nightly video address, said he and Mr Trump agreed to "arrange a meeting between our teams to strengthen air defences". "We had a very detailed discussion on joint production. We need it, America needs it," he said. The conversation came a day after Mr Trump said he had a disappointing call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia pummelled Kyiv with the largest drone attack of the war hours after Mr Trump's conversation with Mr Putin on Thursday. Mr Zelenskyy called the attack "deliberately massive and cynical". Mr Trump spoke with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday, according to Spiegel magazine, citing government sources on Friday. The two leaders discussed the situation in Ukraine, including strengthening its air defences, as well as trade issues, Spiegel reported. Kyiv previously received Patriot batteries and ammunition from the US in the form of aid under former president Joe Biden. Mr Trump criticised Mr Biden for sending weapons to Ukraine without getting anything in return. Since taking office, he has overseen a dramatic shake-up of relations with Kyiv. Reuters
