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Russia assaulted Ukraine with a fresh wave of deadly drone and missile strikes Wednesday in another audacious rebellion of President Trump’s 50-day peace ultimatum to Vladimir Putin.
Northeastern city Kharkiv was rocked by 17 strikes in just 20 minutes after midnight, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing Ukrainian government officials.
The intense barrage was focused on the city’s Kyivskyi district, where at least two people were killed and several more injured, Reuters reported.
There were also strikes reported to the east of Kharkiv in the town of Kupiansk and in the city of Kryvi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Power and water supplies were knocked out of service at several of the bombed areas, the outlet reported, citing a local military official, and explosions were also heard in Izmail, a city in Odesa Oblast in southern Ukraine.
The deadly strikes mark the second day in a row that the Russian military violently rebelled against Trump’s 50-day peace ultimatum he issued to Putin on Monday.
Early Tuesday morning, Russia killed five and injured 43 others, including two teens and four children, in bombing strikes targeting Sumy, with Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblast also under assault, the Kyiv Independent reported.
Russia claimed to only target military-industrial facilities, but local reports stated several residential buildings, a university and medical sites were also hit by drones, according to EuroNews.
The “billions of dollars” worth of weapons being sent over to Ukraine via NATO allies will include “everything,” Trump vowed Monday during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Rutte later warned Moscow’s allies to “call Vladimir” and tell him “to get serious” about the commander in chief’s potential “secondary tariffs” threat on Moscow’s allies within those 50 days if no peace deal is reached.
While the Kremlin called Trump’s warning “quite serious” Tuesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov insisted that “any attempts to make demands, especially ultimatums, are unacceptable to us,” according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
‘Fear is a present all the time’
A Ukrainian mother who was wounded with her 14-year-old daughter in Monday’s brutal strike in Sumy is pleading with Trump to bring peace to their war-torn homeland.
“Fear is a present all the time, but we do not have a choice,” Nataliia Makhno exclusively told The Post after she and her daughter, Anastasiia, narrowly escaped death while walking home from a grocery store as the assault began.
The teen’s body was riddled with shrapnel wounds, and she and her mother both suffered severe blast trauma. The youngster — an award-winning modern dancer — is receiving inpatient care, putting her passion on hold until she recovers, said a devastated Nataliia, who also has an inner ear injury from the deafening boom.
“Living here is scary, but sadly, we have become used to it,” she said, adding that the family moved to Sumy, where her serviceman husband is stationed, from Myrophilla in 2022 because they thought it would be safer.
The shattered mother is now begging Trump to act quickly to help end the nightmare they’ve endured throughout the 40-month-long war.
“I would like to ask very much that he help us so that peace comes to our Ukraine and that we can live as before when we were not afraid and our children lived under a peaceful sky,” Nataliia said.
“He can help us to cope with such a terrible misfortune that has come to us so that we can be here, live, rejoice, marry, have children and wait for grandchildren,” she added.
“Our children should be able to live calmly, grow, live quietly, work and be happy.”
English (US)