Russia Launches Over 200 Drones Over Ukraine As Zelensky Heads to Plead His Case With Trump

Russia launched over 200 drones against Ukraine between late Thursday and Friday as the latter's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is set to meet with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump at the White House.

The Ukrainian Air Force informed through its Telegram channel that a little over half of the drones were confirmed to be downed across several cities including Kharkiv, Kyiv, Plotava and Sumy. Ukraine deployed planes, anti-aircraft missile troops, electronic warfare units and mobile fire groups, among others, according to the Kyiv Post. Moreover, 97 decoy drones vanished from radars without causing significant harm.

One of the drones did hit a high-rise building in Zaporizhzhia. Part of the structure caught fire and an 82-year-old woman was taken to the hospital with injuries.

Friday's is one of the largest such attacks recorded in a war that has already raged on for more than three years. The largest one took place last Sunday, when Moscow launched 267 drones, missiles and decoy drones against Ukraine.

The attack took place as Zelensky heads to Washington D.C. to meet with Trump as the U.S. president anticipates the signing of a "very big agreement." The deal, centered on U.S. access to Ukraine's rare minerals, marks a significant development and is seen as a first step toward potentially ending the war.

Speaking during his first cabinet meeting, Trump praised the negotiators involved in crafting the agreement and emphasized its financial benefits for the U.S. "The previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we've been able to make a deal where we're going to get our money back and we're gonna get a lot of money in the future," Trump said.

While an earlier U.S. request for $500 billion in potential revenues from Ukraine's natural resources has reportedly been dropped, Kyiv's push for security guarantees as part of the deal remains unresolved. Zelensky has stressed the importance of including at least a "sentence" on security assurances, but Trump reiterated that such commitments should come from Europe, Ukraine's "next-door neighbor."

Tensions rose over the past weeks as Trump and some top officials openly voiced their frustration with Zelensky, with the president even calling him a "dictator without elections." After the matter was seemingly solved, Trump was asked by a reporter if he still believed Zelensky was a dictator. "Did I say that? I can't believe I said that," Trump responded.