Category: Associated Press

The meeting in the Oval Office between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a diplomatic car crash.

“Your country is in big trouble. You’re not winning,” Trump said, dressing down Zelenskyy in front of the world’s media. “You don’t have the cards.”

The blowup in February 2025, three years into the war, was more than just a heated public exchange: The Ukrainian delegation was asked to leave the White House, and Washington briefly suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv. In the ensuing months, as Russia made slow but steady gains on the battlefield, Trump warmly welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and seemed ready to push Ukraine into an unfavorable peace deal, including forcing it to give up territory.

But even as Zelensky sat next to Trump, his forces were preparing an operation that would reveal Ukraine’s ability and ambition to take the war to Russia: Months later, drones smuggled into the country attacked Russian bombers, destroying or damaging planes worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Since then, Kyiv has ramped up a campaign of longer-range strikes inside Russia and in areas Moscow has seized, increased production of weapons, targeted Russian air defenses, and hit oil infrastructure and the warehouses of a major retailer in a bid to ensure ordinary Russians feel the impact of the conflict.

In an embarrassment to Putin, Ukrainian drone strikes sent thick plumes of smoke billowing over St. Petersburg shortly before the opening of an international economic forum in June. Concern over Ukraine’s attacks led Russian authorities to scale down the May 9 military parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany. Strikes on oil refineries have caused a summer fuel crisis.

By the time Trump and Zelensky met at a NATO summit in July, the American president said the Ukrainian leader had “been very effective” in the war. “We’ve actually developed a good relationship,” Trump added.

But as Ukraine’s strikes have intensified, so have Russia’s — and Kyiv faces major challenges in defending against them because of shortages of American Patriot air defense missiles.

In the first six months of the year, 1,396 civilians were killed in Ukraine, according to the U.N. Meanwhile, the world body said Russian authorities reported 250 civilians killed in the same period. On Monday, a strike that Ukraine said hit an oil refinery in Russia killed 13 people, according to local officials.

And while Ukraine’s effort appears to have shifted the narrative about the war in Washington, it’s still not clear if it will be able to push Putin toward the negotiating table.

Ukraine’s strikes are aimed at undermining the idea that Russia can afford to “just let this roll,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the London-based RUSI think tank.

The question of whether it will succeed depends on how much pain Ukraine can exact. “Logically, above a certain threshold, it does work but whether they can reach that threshold is an interesting question” — and one that depends at least partly on factors outside Kyiv’s control, like continued European financial support, he noted.

Ukraine brings the war to Russia

While most of Ukraine’s strikes have a range of less than 125 miles, its longer-range attacks have increased dramatically this year. It launched three times as many of those strikes in July as it did in January, according to data from ACLED, an independent conflict monitor. Repeatedly hitting deep into Russia has forced its military to stretch air defenses over a larger area.

Many of its strikes have focused on four key categories of targets, according to an Associated Press analysis of hundreds of Ukrainian attacks this year — compiled from statements by Russian officials and state media and the Ukrainian military.

As the Iran war pushed up energy prices, leading the U.S. to ease sanctions on Russian oil, Kyiv ramped up strikes on oil infrastructure to deny the Kremlin revenue from fuel exports and force shortages on ordinary Russians. It is also striking defense manufacturing to damage Russia’s long-term ability to produce weapons, targeting air defenses to clear a path for its own arms, and hitting retail warehouses to bring the effects to ordinary Russians.

— As part of the campaign against oil infrastructure, Kyiv said it hit Russia’s largest oil refinery, more than 1,550 miles from Ukraine.

— Kyiv has also targeted defense manufacturing centers. It hit a factory making navigation systems multiple times, including with its own Flamingo missile.

— In July and August, Ukraine struck Wildberries warehouses. Kyiv said the company helps supply the Russian military. Moscow denies that.

— Many of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian air defenses and radar are around Russian-held Crimea and are often carried out with drones.

Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, the commander leading Ukraine’s drone war, told the AP its strikes in Crimea are also aimed at rendering the peninsula unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.

Starlink gives Ukraine an advantage — for now

It’s not always clear if Ukraine’s attacks are effective — and some may have resulted in minimal or no damage. In May and June, Ukraine said it hit several satellite, reconnaissance, or signals intelligence facilities in Russia, but satellite images analyzed by AP did not show major damage.

Still, Ukraine has one advantage that can help it strip back Russian air defenses and make its drone strikes more precise.

It has access to Elon Musk’s satellite communications service Starlink — which means its operators can control drones in real time in Russian-held Ukrainian territory. Russia has been blocked from using Starlink.

But Russia is also building its own version of Starlink, and is installing jamming systems that hamper Starlink connectivity, Brovdi said.

Ukraine is investing heavily in weapons production

Even before the Oval Office meeting, Ukraine scrambled to invest in new weapons — but that moment was “a real wake-up call,” said a European military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the front-line situation in detail. It became clear that U.S. support could be stopped “from one day to the next.”

Ukraine doubled down on production, churning out a growing array of weapons in larger numbers and shortening traditional research and production cycles from decades to years or even months.

Even so, Ukraine is still not able to produce as many missiles as it needs. It also took Ukraine time to make systems that could target facilities precisely enough that Kyiv felt comfortable using them to strike deep into Russia, Watling said.

And while Ukraine has begun to resolve navigational issues with its missiles, such as the Flamingo, those weapons are still not as accurate — or as stealthy — as their Western analogues. That often means hundreds of drones must be fired to overwhelm Russian air defenses to allow a missile to get through.

It’s an expensive and time-consuming way to wage war since only 5% to 9% of what Ukraine fires gets past Russian air defenses, according to Watling.

But, although Russia’s weapons are more powerful, Zelensky suggested at the NATO summit that Putin is “losing the initiative” in the war as Ukraine has moved the fight from the stalled battlefield to the sky.

Sitting next to Trump at the summit, the Ukrainian leader even cracked a joke, demurring when Trump asked him if he would accept Moscow as a venue for peace talks, as Putin has suggested.

“There are a lot of Ukrainian drones in the air,” Zelensky said. ”It would be dangerous.”

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with missiles, drones, and glide bombs Tuesday, killing at least 10 civilians, officials said, as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow is getting new military help from North Korea for its more than 4-year-old invasion.

Zelensky said Russian forces used ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea in an overnight attack on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where a company said seven workers at its steel plant were killed and 21 injured.

Three more people, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed by Russian drones and artillery in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said.

In addition to the ballistic missiles, North Korea is preparing to deploy more of its troops to Russia, Zelensky said late Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2024, pledging mutual aid if either country faces aggression.

Kim has sent thousands of troops and huge supplies of weapons to support Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some experts say the engagement with Moscow is helping improve North Korea’s military capabilities, and Zelensky said the battlefield experience would help Pyongyang menace other countries in its region.

Ukraine says Russia is poised to escalate the war

Ukraine says Russia is scaling up its production of ballistic missiles, aiming to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Patriot air defense interceptors that can stop them, and claims Moscow is preparing to recruit more troops for a new push on the front line that stretches 775 miles along eastern and southern Ukraine.

“Every step Russia takes — increasing ballistic missile production, bringing in North Korean equipment, preparing for mobilization — all of this shows that Moscow is preparing not for peace, but for escalation,” Zelensky said on social media.

In an unusual step, Ukraine’s air force didn’t say in its daily report how many missiles Russia launched overnight. It was not clear whether the omission was deliberate, and Kyiv officials made no immediate comment.

U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to stop the war have fizzled as Washington grew frustrated with the lack of progress and its attention turned to the Iran war.

In an indication that Putin is determined to press on with the invasion, Russia’s highest court on Monday ordered that Yabloko, the only political party opposing the war, be excluded from the ballot in the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary election.

“The Kremlin will not enter serious negotiations or make meaningful compromises on its demands as long as Putin believes that he has a viable military path to achieving his full objectives,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an analysis Monday.

“Ukraine’s Patriot shortages offer Russia an opportunity to cause very serious damage to Ukraine over the coming winter and will therefore contribute to delaying meaningful negotiations and protracting the war,” it said.

Russia hits the grounds of a Kyiv children’s hospital

Russian forces also struck parts of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, overnight, according to officials. One strike hit the grounds of a children’s hospital, leaving two craters and shattering windows, the State Emergency Service said. Children and medical workers were in bomb shelters and nobody was hurt, it added.

At another location in Kyiv, a Russian strike started a fire in a warehouse that spread across about nearly 13,000 square feet, according to emergency officials.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces overnight struck “military industrial facilities and transport and logistics centers” in Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia with “ground-based precision weapons.”

It said in a statement that it hit civilian storage facilities housing drones in Kyiv and a metallurgical plant in Zaporizhzhia.

Metinvest, a major Ukrainian mining and metals company with operations in Zaporizhzhia, said seven of its steel plant employees died as staff tried to reach shelters after a warning of an incoming ballistic missile.

The company, which employs tens of thousands of people, said in a statement that the attack damaged its blast furnace and other equipment and forced the plant to shut down.

Russia targeted Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia with Zircon anti-ship missiles and Iskander ballistic missiles, while launching 120 long-range strike drones across the country, Ukraine’s air force said.

Russia’s biggest e-commerce company hit again

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses overnight intercepted nearly 400 Ukrainian drones over 14 regions and Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed from Kyiv in 2014.

Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries, said its logistical facilities in the Voronezh region near the Ukrainian border came under attack and caught fire. It added that the fire was extinguished and goods stored there were “largely undamaged.”

Ukraine has repeatedly struck Wildberries warehouses and Russian oil facilities in what it says is a strategy to compel Putin to negotiate an end to the invasion.

Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck an oil refinery in the city of Orsk in Russia’s Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan, about 930 miles from Ukraine, causing a fire.

The refinery, with an annual processing capacity of about 44 million barrels of crude oil, produces gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel, among other products. The extent of the damage was being assessed, the military said.

Meanwhile, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said its navy destroyed two drones drifting in the Black Sea about 90 nautical miles from the port of Constanta.

The Gerbera-type drones were neutralized by divers using controlled detonations, and some pieces were recovered, the ministry said, adding that Ukraine said the drones were not theirs.

U.N. says over 16,000 civilians are being held by Russia

The United Nations, meanwhile, estimates that more than 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during the war are still being “deprived of their liberty,” with many held incommunicado and on grounds that don’t comply with international law.

“Widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment” of both Ukrainian civilian detainees and prisoners of war by Russia are continuing, including sexual violence, said Claudia Fuentes Julio, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights.

She spoke at an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Monday to spotlight the plight of civilians and soldiers taken following the Russia invasion.

PEREIRA, Colombia — Rescue crews and civilians in Colombia painstakingly searched through rubble Tuesday in the hopes of finding survivors trapped under debris after a powerful earthquake left thousands missing in dozens of cities and towns.

The 7.4 magnitude earthquake that hit western Colombia on Monday wreaked havoc, collapsing buildings, buckling roads, crushing cars, and leaving devastated residents to console each other among the wreckage of their homes. Excavators and heavy machinery cleared heavy chunks of concrete, while buckets of rubble were passed hand-to-hand along a line of volunteers.

Rescue crews and volunteers picked through flattened concrete buildings in affected cities, searching for signs of life. They raised their hands to call for silence when they thought they heard someone beneath the piles of debris. At least one woman was retrieved — alive — from the rubble.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella said the earthquake killed at least 181 people and left 2,595 more injured. He said at least 195 remained missing, but civilian-run databases suggest that number could be closer to 4,000.

Crews race to find survivors

Authorities said the deaths were concentrated in the cities of Cali, Pereira, Manizales, and Quibdo, but local leaders and families worried about casualties and damage in rural areas, from where very little information has emerged. Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours crucial for retrieving people alive, though that threshold can be extended if they have access to food and water.

De la Espriella said more than 1,000 homes were destroyed and yet more damaged.

Standing near the remains of his brother’s collapsed apartment building in Pereira, Jairo Vargas said he made the 135-mile drive from Medellin, hoping to find him alive.

“I’m absolutely certain he’s here. Absolutely certain,” Vargas said, adding that his brother’s car was still parked outside. But he fears his sibling did not survive.

“The debris surrounding my brother is soft,” he said, as heavy machinery rumbled nearby. “It’s possible that it’s protecting him, but we can’t hear any noises anymore. I don’t know. I have little hope.”

Colombia’s new president faces his first serious challenge

The earthquake presents the first major test for first-time officeholder de la Espriella, who entered office just days before the natural disaster. The leader, who split the country in recent elections, now seeks to unite Colombia in its disaster response.

That challenge was particularly notable in Choco, the region at the quake’s epicenter. It is one of Colombia’s poorest and most neglected regions, often beset by warring armed groups. Much of Choco is accessible only by boat, through the jungle, or by airplane.

Sterling Palacios, a religious and environmental leader in the region, said Choco’s capital and smaller communities along the Atrato River were devastated. Homes were reduced to rubble and aftershocks continued to rumble, terrifying residents who slept in the streets overnight.

The Colombian Geological Service said it has documented more than 100 less powerful aftershocks since the initial quake.

“There are towns where people have lost everything, where people have died, where homes have been destroyed,” he said. “We don’t have a full panorama of the damage, but we know it’s been massive.”

De la Espriella traveled to Quibdo in Choco on Monday night where he announced he was mobilizing “the entire military and police apparatus,” as well as deploying engineers, rescue workers, and search dogs.

“Choco will never again be the ‘land of the forgotten,’” he said.

Palacios said the government’s response has so far been “concentrated in the capital,” and that authorities were flying the wounded from Quibdo to hospitals in the city of Medellín.

The biggest challenge, he said, remains towns in rural areas only reachable by boat — journeys that can take hours or days. That response is also complicated by a toxic slate of armed groups warring for control who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, blocked healthcare workers from traveling to remote areas.

“It’s a risk and it’s very difficult to predict” what could happen, he said, adding it could take weeks to fully assess the devastation.

Desperate residents seek news of loved ones

Families posted information about missing loved ones on citizen-run websites.

Dana Carolina Zamora posted an image of her missing 60-year-old uncle, Miguel Ángel Zamora, cradling his dog. The farmer was living in a rural area of El Cairo, not far from the quake’s epicenter in San Jose Del Palmar.

Local authorities said 80% of El Cairo, a town of about 7,000 people, was damaged. Zamora said her uncle lived in a traditional house of sticks and mud.

“We are afraid. We hope that is not the case, that he is all right and that it is only a communication failure. But we haven’t heard anything from him,” Zamora said.

The earthquake left many people unnerved after back-to-back quakes devastated neighboring Venezuela in late June, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing more than 6,300 people.

Mónica Sánchez, who lives in Pereira, one of the worst-hit cities, said when the quake happened a wall collapsed inside her clothing factory. Sánchez and her 12 employees escaped just in time.

“It was shocking — the city fell down around us,” she said.

On Tuesday, rescue workers pulled a woman alive from the rubble. Diana Troncoso lay on a stretcher, dusty and scraped up, with her eyes closed. Observers burst into applause as she emerged, but search teams raised their hand to call for quiet so they could continue their search for survivors.

Pereira and Cali enforced curfews Monday night to prevent looting, and private vehicles were banned from the roads of Pereira so ambulances, police, and rescue workers were able to navigate what’s left of the roads.

The U.S. State Department has announced it would provide $15.5 million for emergency shelter, food, and other aid. Governments across Latin America have also lined up to help.

“This has been a tragedy for the whole city, for thousands of families,” Pereira Mayor Mauricio Salazar told local media, his voice quavering. “But here we are, and we will continue forward with the hand of God.”

EASTERN UKRAINE — The commander leading Ukraine’s drone war says his country’s recent strikes in Crimea are the first phase of a campaign aimed at rendering the peninsula — illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 — unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.

Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, one of Ukraine’s most prominent commanders among a new generation of soldiers, said his forces could strike seven times more military targets in Crimea if the money pledged by Western allies came faster.

“Crimea falls within the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war,” Brovdi told the Associated Press in an interview.

Despite that shortfall, Ukraine’s summer campaign in Crimea has already inflicted significant damage: striking rail bridges, oil depots, and power infrastructure to disrupt supply lines and blind Russian air defenses as drones fly in.

Brovdi said his forces are equipped at just 14% of what they would need to carry out the Crimea campaign at full capacity.

A firm believer in numbers since his past life running an international grain trading business, Brovdi joined Ukraine’s territorial defense as a volunteer in the war’s opening days. He rose quickly, commanding one of the country’s most effective drone brigades before being tapped to lead a force with no precedent before this war — Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.

“It’s not that the production capacity of Ukrainian manufacturers doesn’t allow us to make the necessary quantities” of drones, Brovdi said. “It’s the banal problem of untimely financing, which our partners do allocate, but which moves significantly slower than our plans.”

A lover of the arts

A devoted patron of the arts, Brovdi works in an underground command post that resembles a museum, with pieces of Ukrainian art on display, including by renowned painter Maria Prymachenko — each with small placards noting their titles and a QR code linking to more information. “Please don’t touch the sculpture,” reads a sign beneath one piece.

The artwork sits against a backdrop of dozens of screens streaming live footage from the front, along with real-time data that drives decisions on the battlefield. Soldiers can grab good coffee, pick a book, work out, or rest in sleeping pods — a culture that feels closer to a Silicon Valley office than a war room.

They work around the clock to try to prevent Crimea from functioning as a staging ground for the Russian military, said Brovdi, whose call sign, Magyar, nods to his ethnic Hungarian roots in Zakarpattia, the western Ukrainian region bordering Hungary.

He pointed to one sign of progress — in four recent large-scale Russian missile barrages from the peninsula, only five missiles were launched in total, a drop he credited to the systematic destruction of Russian air defenses there. The AP couldn’t independently verify the claim.

To open that “window” for drones to strike the peninsula without being shot down en masse, his forces destroyed more than 300 air defense assets over recent months — surface-to-air systems, radar stations, electronic warfare equipment.

The window metaphor sends him into a sidetrack about something personal — he loves sleeping with one open, a pleasure he rarely gets anymore as one of Russia’s most hunted men, who spends most of his time in underground bunkers.

Forcing Russia out of Crimea

Much of Russia’s Soviet-era air defense hardware runs on the power grid, which is one of the reasons Crimea’s electrical infrastructure has become a recurring target. Russian soldiers become “blind,” left with just machine guns and rifles, he said. The tactic has also impacted access to power for civilians, and Brovdi said he has twice publicly apologized to Ukrainians living in Crimea for the disruptions.

Wherever Starlink connectivity reaches across Crimea, his forces can now destroy even the most heavily defended target using an average of just three drones, mixing munitions with different characteristics and warheads depending on what’s being hit. He described the strikes as deliberately calibrated — different munitions for a bridge pier than for a fuel truck or a moving train — and said his forces avoid hitting civilian infrastructure.

“Creating conditions that make it impossible for any kind of military capability … to remain there will make Crimea uninteresting … as a military staging ground,” he said.

Ukraine is also working to dismantle Crimea’s role as a naval base — a blow to Russia’s presence near NATO’s borders, he added.

The campaign’s early results have not been made public, Brovdi said. But roughly two weeks into the offensive that began in late June, he said Ukrainian intelligence indicated Russian authorities had ordered all military commands and security services to relocate off the peninsula, along with a covert order to remove secret archives and artworks. The AP could not independently verify the account.

Threats from Russia

Meanwhile, Russia is working to counter Ukraine’s edge. It is installing jamming systems at a scale that will, to some degree, degrade Starlink connectivity, Brovdi said.

Russia is also building its own satellite communications system to rival Starlink, he said. “This is a risk for the entire planet,” Brovdi said, “because a dictatorship will gain access to information across the whole globe.”

He also pointed to other threats facing Ukraine. The concentration of jet-powered Shahed drones, which are much harder for Ukraine to shoot down, has increased 2½ times in recent weeks, he said.

Russia’s military can currently fire a simultaneous salvo of 77 ballistic and cruise missiles, he said, and plans to increase that to 200. That is one of Ukraine’s most vulnerable points, since the country is running short of interceptors for the U.S.-made Patriot — the only system Ukraine has in its arsenal against ballistic missiles — meaning dozens fired by Russia during mass barrages get through and hit their targets.

“Even if they only manage half of that, it will all be flying at us,” Brovdi said. The only way to bring the number down, he said, is by striking every facility involved in producing those missiles — underscoring the importance of Ukraine’s long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory.

Ukraine’s plan for Russia’s Wildberries

Ukraine has increasingly targeted Wildberries, Russia’s largest online marketplace, sometimes described as the country’s answer to Amazon, and Brovdi named it as a target.

“Wildberries is, first of all, a supply platform — it’s the war’s quartermaster,” he said, noting the company runs a dedicated section selling goods for Russia’s military.

The Kremlin has denied the site supplies the Russian military and has accused Ukraine of striking civilian targets. Russia regularly attacks Ukrainian logistics and retail facilities.

At the same time, Brovdi said, the strikes on Wildberries are meant to make ordinary Russians feel the war directly, in hopes the resulting desire to end it could weigh on Russia’s ability to keep fighting.

Brovdi declined to give a timeline for the Wildberries campaign, saying only that the strikes will continue “until it becomes impossible for it to recover quickly.”

“Ultimately, Wildberries is, forgive the expression, a consumer gambling addiction,” he said, arguing that losing access to it — like restrictions on social media — creates an intrusion on one’s personal life that most Russians feel.

“It turned out to be a sensitive sensor of the comfort of Russia’s massive population — people who consider themselves completely untouched by the actions of the aggressor country,” he said.