# Russia launches record 273-drone strike on Ukraine as Trump-Putin call looms
*Event date: 2025-05-18*
Russia launched 273 drones at Ukraine in what Kyiv described as the largest drone attack of the war, a strike that landed hours after renewed diplomatic contacts and on the eve of a planned phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
The attack killed a 28-year-old woman in the Kyiv region and wounded at least three people, including a four-year-old child, according to Ukrainian authorities. Ukraine's air force said the drones were launched before 8am local time and targeted mainly the Kyiv region, along with the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions in the east.
Ukrainian air force data cited in the reporting showed the attack surpassed Russia's previous record of 267 drones, launched on the eve of the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion. Of the 273 drones, 88 were shot down, while 128 disappeared from radar during the attack. Ukraine said some of those may have crashed because of software failures or fuel exhaustion, and some may have been decoys without explosives.
The sheer number of drones mattered as much as the damage. Russia and Ukraine have increasingly used decoy drones in swarms designed to overload air defenses, and the attack unfolded just after the first direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv in years failed to produce a ceasefire. It also came before Trump was due to speak with Putin about ending the war.
The Guardian reporting said the strike underlined the difficulty of the diplomatic effort. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had met US Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of Pope Leo's inauguration to prepare for Monday's Trump call. European leaders were also coordinating around the same diplomatic track and discussing the possibility of new sanctions if Russia did not engage seriously.
Ukrainian military intelligence separately warned that Moscow may be preparing to test-fire a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile as a show of force, though there was no immediate Russian response to that allegation.
For Kyiv, the attack added another layer of pressure to a war that has now entered a new phase of diplomacy without any sign of a battlefield pause. The scale of the drone barrage suggested that Russia was still willing to escalate even as governments in Europe and the United States tried to use negotiations to force movement toward a ceasefire.
What the strike signals
The attack did not produce mass casualties relative to its size, but it sent a clear message: Russia can still mount large, coordinated drone waves while talks continue. That makes the coming diplomatic round more difficult, not less, because it shows Moscow is still pressing its military advantage even while international leaders seek a path to talks.
