AT LEAST five people were killed today by a night-time Russian drone strike that hit a residential area in the northern Ukrainian city of Pryluky, officials said.

Another six people were reported to have been wounded.

The attack came just hours after United States President Donald Trump spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. 

According to Mr Trump, President Putin said “very strongly” that Russia will retaliate for Ukraine’s stunning drone attacks on Russian military airfields last weekend.

Six people were wounded in the attack on Pryluky, which lies about 60 miles east of Kiev, the capital. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a total of 103 drones and one ballistic missile had targeted multiple Ukrainian regions overnight, including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odessa, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipro and Kherson.

“This is another massive strike,” Mr Zelensky said. “It is yet another reason to impose the strongest possible sanctions and apply pressure collectively.”

US-led diplomatic efforts to stop the more than three-year-long conflict have delivered no significant progress, and the grinding war of attrition has continued unabated with the Russians continuing to make gains.

Germany’s new leader Friedrich Merz was due to meet President Trump in Washington today as he works to keep the US on board with Western military support for Ukraine.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused European Union leaders today of continuing the war because they believe it is their duty to fight Russia.

The Hungarian leader said the current EU leadership has replaced its main task of improving the wellbeing of its member countries with fighting Russia. 

He said: “According to Brussels’ military propaganda, Russia could attack the EU and Nato countries and only a pre-emptive strike can stop it.”

Mr Orban said the war in Ukraine is being considered as such a pre-emptive strike.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told a visiting top Russian official that his country will “unconditionally support” Russia’s war against Ukraine, the North’s media reported on Thursday.

In April, the two countries officially confirmed North Korean troops had been deployed to help Russia repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. 

In a meeting with Russian security council secretary Sergei Shoigu in Pyongyang on Wednesday, Mr Kim affirmed that North Korea will “unconditionally support the stand of Russia and its foreign policies in all the crucial international political issues including the Ukrainian issue,” the Korean Central News Agency said.