Zelenskyy Calls for Increased Pressure on Russia After Overnight Drone and Missile Barrage

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on his allies in the United States and Europe to increase pressure on Moscow after Russia launched an enormous drone and missile attack against his country on June 6.

“If someone is not applying pressure and is giving the war more time to take lives, that is complicity and accountability. We must act decisively,” he wrote on social media platform X.

“Russia must be held accountable for this. Since the first minute of this war, they have been striking cities and villages to destroy life.

“We’ve done a lot together with the world to enable Ukraine to defend itself. But now is exactly the moment when America, Europe, and everyone around the world can stop this war together by pressuring Russia.”

Ukraine’s air force stated that its defense units shot down 406 out of 452 Russian drones and missiles during an overnight attack on June 6 on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and other regions.

Zelenskyy noted that three people had been killed and 49 wounded in the Kremlin’s overnight aerial barrage.

The bombardment came on the heels of a warning from Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia would strike back after Ukraine destroyed several strategic sites deep inside Russia.

Putin told U.S. President Donald Trump during a phone call that he planned to retaliate and seemingly pressed ahead with the assault despite being urged not to by his American counterpart.

“You know, he was attacked. And they attacked pretty harshly. They went deep into Russia, and he actually told me ‘We have no choice but to attack based on that,’ and it’s probably not going to be pretty,” Trump said at a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“I don’t like it. I said, ‘Don’t do it, you shouldn’t do it. You should stop it.’ But again, there’s a lot of hatred.”

The wide-reaching Ukrainian attack earlier this week, dubbed Operation Spiderweb, struck targets in multiple time zones across Russia, including an air base more than 2,500 miles from Ukraine, and used smuggled commercial drones launched from trucks parked near the bases.

Those strikes were followed by an explosive attack that severely damaged the Kerch Bridge linking Russia with Crimea, according to Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency.

In Russia, 10 Ukrainian drones bound for Moscow were downed, the capital city’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, said. Flights at the city’s airports were also temporarily suspended during the night as a precaution.

Kyiv’s drones also targeted three other Russian regions, damaging apartment buildings and industrial plants, with officials saying three people sustained injuries.

The Russian Defense Ministry stated that air defenses downed 174 Ukrainian drones over 13 regions, as well as three Ukrainian Neptune missiles over the Black Sea.

The hostilities have continued days after delegations from Moscow and Kyiv ended the second round of cease-fire talks in Istanbul, Turkey, after just an hour.

Earlier this week, Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, warned that the June 1 Ukrainian drone attack could take the war to an unpredictable place.