President Donald Trump on Monday said he was “very disappointed” in Russian President Vladimir Putin and said he will “reduce” the original 50-day deadline he set earlier this month to 10-12 days from today.
“I’m going to make a new deadline, of about 10, 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump told reporters from Scotland. “There’s no reason for waiting. It was 50 days, I wanted to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.”
Trump originally set a 50-day deadline for Putin to reach a peace deal on July 14 while meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Washington, D.C. But by moving up the deadline to 12-days from Monday, he cut the overall end date in half.
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“I’m disappointed in President Putin, very disappointed in him,” Trump said Monday. “So we’re going to have to look, and I’m going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number, because I think I already know the answer.”
Trump’s comments came just hours after Russia unleashed more than 300 drones and missiles across Ukraine, prompting not only Kyiv to scramble its Air Force, but Poland’s Operational Command said it too had deployed fighter jets to the sky.
“I would have said five times we would have had a deal. I’ve spoken to President Putin a lot,” Trump told reporters, echoing his previous frustration that speaking with Putin has yielded little to no results. “But we’ve had discussions…we thought we had that settled numerous times.
“And then President Putin goes out and such, launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever. You have bodies lying all over the street,” Trump continued. “And I say, that’s not the way to do it. So we’ll see what happens.”
No deaths have yet been confirmed from the early morning strikes that hit the capital city of Kyiv wounding at least five, including a two-year-old girl. The other strikes targeted the Khmelnytskyi region to the west of Kyiv and the Kirovohrad region to the south of Kyiv.
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Additional casualties have not been reported.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported on Monday that 324 Shahed-type attack and decoy drones were fired along with four Kh-101 cruise missiles and three Kh-47M2 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles.
Ukraine’s air defense systems reportedly shot down 309 UAVs and two Kh-101 cruise missiles.
Two of the cruise missiles and 15 drones hit targets in three locations, while three of the Kinzhal missiles apparently failed to reach their intended targets.
“Our unmanned defenses delivered strong results against ‘Shaheds’ – dozens of Russian drones were shot down. Several missiles were also intercepted overnight,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message on X. “Unfortunately, not all of them – there were also hits.
“But we are constantly strengthening Ukraine’s air shield, and it is vital to maintain clear understanding among partners of how exactly they can help,” he added. “Step by step, we are closing the funding gap for drone production, and I will be holding new talks with partners on this task later this week.”
