Russia has launched three waves of intense missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital just hours after Donald Trump’s top diplomat lavished praise on Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian.”
The attacks on Kyiv involved 21 rockets that killed at least one person and injured 22 others. Further strikes on at least 11 other regions killed another person and brought the total injured to 34, including five children.
“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” Steve Witkoff, 69, told the Russian tyrant at a face-to-face meeting in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
“You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that,” the U.S. envoy for peace missions added. “I commend you, and I thank you again.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pointedly quoted Witkoff’s words in an X post detailing the impact of Moscow’s overnight attacks on Thursday morning.
“Three waves of ballistic missiles have been launched at Kyiv by Russian ‘humanitarians’ since yesterday evening,” Zelensky wrote. He then listed damaged structures, including residential buildings, energy facilities, railways and metro stations, shopping malls, businesses, and a monastery.
“I am grateful to everyone who sees the situation for what it is and acknowledged the reality,” he went on. “The aggressor deserves to be treated accordingly. Ukraine deserves support. People’s lives deserve protection. Thank you to everyone who stands with Ukraine!”
Witkoff’s remarks followed Russian strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure on Tuesday night that killed three people in Kyiv and the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Roughly 700,000 people, including 17,000 Ukrainian civilians, 150,000 Ukrainian service members, and more than half a million of Russia’s own troops, have died since Putin launched his full-scale invasion in 2022.
The U.S. is among dozens of countries to have sanctioned the Russian president over the conflict, while the International Criminal Court has a warrant out for his arrest over alleged war crimes concerning the forced removal of children from occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia.
Witkoff’s comments on Wednesday, which came with him in Russia to push for negotiations to end the war, followed after Trump himself attacked Zelensky and praised Putin last week.
“Zelensky’s not a good guy for us to deal with,” the 80-year-old president told Newsmax last Thursday. “I find Zelensky more difficult to deal with than Putin.”
Relations between the U.S. and Ukraine are at an all-time low after Trump struck a deal with Putin earlier this month to buy more than 2 million tonnes of Russian diesel in a bid to lower fuel prices driven up by Trump’s war of choice with Iran.
That conflict, and its impact on domestic prices in the U.S., have helped Democrats gain a lead of around 10 points ahead of the November midterms, which could hand them control of both the House and Senate.
The White House has slowed coverage from satellite internet systems vital to Ukraine’s frontline defense and threatened to cut off military intelligence to its nominal ally in the conflict to pressure Zelensky into accepting an “energy ceasefire” with Russia.
Zelensky has defied that moratorium, which Trump unilaterally declared on Truth Social without consulting either Moscow or Kyiv, after Russia repeatedly violated the supposed agreement.
The Ukrainian president also took direct aim at his American counterpart in a blistering interview with the Financial Times last week, when he accused Trump of kowtowing to the Russian dictator’s demands.
“He speaks about it openly and loudly that he loves such people and he respects such people,” Zelensky said. “Because for him people who can be leaders 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, it means they can be very strong.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
