Russia fires record 728 drones at Ukraine in massive strike

Russia pummelled Ukraine with its largest missile and drone attack in more than three years of war, claiming to have targeted an airfield in a region bordering EU and NATO member Poland.

The strike comes after US Donald Trump said he would ramp up arms deliveries to Ukraine and accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of talking "bullshit" on Ukraine.

AFP journalists in Kyiv heard explosions ringing out and drones buzzing over the capital during the barrage after air raid sirens sounded.

The latest strike, which regional officials said killed one civilian in the Khmelnytsky region, beat a previous Russian record of 550 drones and missiles set last week.

The air force said Russia attacked with 728 drones and 13 missiles, adding that its air defence systems intercepted 711 drones and destroyed seven missiles.

"This is a telling attack -- and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all," President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.

Zelensky, who arrived in Rome for meetings with the pope and president, called for allies to step up sanctions on Russia, particularly targeting its energy sector -- an important revenue stream for the Russian war chest.

"Our partners know how to apply pressure in a way that will force Russia to think about ending the war, not launching new strikes," Zelensky added.

Kyiv has repeatedly accused China of supplying parts and technologies central to the Russian drone and missile program, and urged the West to step up secondary penalties.

On Wednesday, Kyiv's security services announced it had detained two Chinese nationals accused of attempting to smuggle missile technology out of the war-torn country.

Igor Polishchuk, the mayor of the western city of Lutsk whose surrounding region borders Poland, said fires had broken out at an "enterprise," but that no one had been reported killed or wounded.

The Russian defence ministry said its "long-range" and "precision" strike had targeted military airfield infrastructure claiming that "all designated targets were destroyed." There was no response to that claim in Kyiv.

Russia's latest record barrage comes just after the United States U-turned on an announcement that it would reduce some weapons supplies to Ukraine.

"It is quite telling that Russia carried out this attack just as the United States publicly announced that it would supply us with weapons," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on social media.

A representative of Ukraine's air force said new Ukrainian drones had played an important role in thwarting the Russian attack. Another official said most of the drones launched were decoys.

The Kremlin meanwhile said Wednesday it was unfazed about Trump's comments about Putin.

"Let's just say that Trump in general has quite a harsh rhetorical style in terms of the phrases he uses," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Two rounds of direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations since Trump returned to the White House have resulted in an increase in prisoner exchanges but no progress on securing a ceasefire, proposed by the United States and Ukraine.

The Kremlin has since said that for now it sees no diplomatic path out of the conflict, launched by Moscow in February 2022, and vowed to pursue its war aims -- effectively seeking to conquer Ukraine and remove its political leadership.

Ukraine has also sought to increase its own attacks on Russia, with Moscow's defence ministry saying Wednesday its air defence units had downed 86 unmanned aerial vehicles, mainly over western regions of the country.

The exchange of aerial broadsides come as Russian forces are slowly but steadily gaining ground at key sectors of the sprawling front line in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian defence ministry announced the capture of another village, Tolstoy, on Wednesday in the eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin has claimed as part of Russia since 2022, despite not fully controlling it.

Ukrainian prosecutors in the region said Russian drone and bombing attacks in two towns in Donetsk killed eight civilians on Wednesday.

Officials published images showing the charred remains of two people who burned to death in their car, which officials said was hit by a Russian drone.

A one-year-old boy was killed in a separate Russian attack in the village of Pravdyne in the southern Kherson region, local officials announced.