Donald Trump was not given a heads-up about Ukraine’s unprecedented drone strikes that took out a huge fleet of Russian planes on Sunday, according to reports.
Ukraine’s “large-scale” drone attack launched deep into Russian territory wiped out 40 military bombers and targeted five bases, Ukrainian security sources told CBS News.
The attack took over a year and a half to plan and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the sources added.
Ukrainian officials did not give the Trump administration advance notice of the attack, both Ukrainian and U.S. officials told Axios.
The attack comes as Zelensky announced he would send a delegation headed by Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov to conduct ceasefire talks with Russia in Istanbul on Monday.
A Ukrainian official told Axios the operation was conducted by the country’s security service, with officers launching drones from trucks covertly parked near Russian air bases. Some of the trucks were parked in Siberia, thousands of miles away from Ukraine, according to the report.
About 40 Russian military planes, including strategic bombers, were reportedly struck in the attack.
During the first months of his second term, Trump has pushed for the now three-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine to come to an end.
Trump, who has long been an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, recently vented his frustrations about the Russian leader online, writing on his Truth Social platform that Putin was “absolutely CRAZY” and “needlessly killing a lot of people” in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s unprecedented drone attack on Russia comes as seven people were killed and 69 more injured after bridges collapsed in separate incidents across Russia.
Russia’s Railways initially blamed the collapse in the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, on “illegal interference in the operation of transport”, in a likely reference to Ukrainian saboteurs, but the Telegram post was later removed.
