US President Donald Trump said yesterday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ‘playing with fire’.
Trump’s latest comments follow some of the biggest drone and missile attacks on Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale war began in early 2022, although the level dropped markedly overnight from Monday to yesterday.
“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realise is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Russian forces have captured four villages in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, the local governor said, the latest battlefield setback for Kyiv as it seeks to hold territory and avoid handing Moscow the advantage in any peace talks.
Ukraine has also fired dozens of long-range drones into Russia in recent days, forcing some Moscow airports to close temporarily.
Ukrainian forces used Sumy region as a launch pad to seize a chunk of Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region last year before being largely driven out by April. The area has been pounded for months by Russian guided bomb attacks and other strikes.
“The enemy is continuing attempts to advance with the aim of setting up a so-called ‘buffer zone’,” Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov wrote on Facebook.
He said the villages of Novenke, Basivka, Veselivka and Zhuravka had been occupied, adding that residents had long been evacuated.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Monday it had taken the nearby village of Bilovody, implying a further advance in the more than three-year war.
Though Russia’s offensive activity is concentrated in the eastern Donetsk region, Moscow’s inroads into northeastern Ukraine show how it is stretching Kyiv’s forces on multiple fronts.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly warned that Russia is preparing new offensives against Sumy as well as the northeastern Kharkiv and southeastern Zaporizhzhia regions.
“There is much evidence that they are preparing new offensive operations. Russia is counting on further war,” he said, without elaborating.
Zelenskiy has accused Putin of dragging his feet over peace talks, after representatives from the warring parties met in person earlier in May for the first time in three years.
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