RUSSIA launched a sweeping drone assault across Ukraine on Saturday night and into today, targeting multiple regions, after US President Donald Trump cast doubt on his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the war.

One person was killed and a 14-year-old girl was wounded in the city of Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region, which was hit for the third consecutive night, regional Governor Serhii Lysak said.

The attacks came hours after Russia claimed to have regained control over the remaining parts of the Kursk region, which Ukrainian forces seized in a surprise incursion last August. Ukrainian officials said the fighting in Kursk was not over.

Mr Trump said on Saturday that he doubts whether Mr Putin wants to end the more than three-year war in Ukraine, expressing new scepticism that a peace deal can be reached soon. Only a day earlier, Mr Trump had claimed that Kiev and Moscow were “very close to a deal.

“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns over the last few days,” Mr Trump wrote in a social media post as he flew back to the United States after attending the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican, where he briefly met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

He also hinted at further sanctions against Russia.

The Trump-Zelensky conversation on the sidelines of the Pope’s funeral was the first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders since their heated argument at the White House in late February.

Russia fired 149 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks, the Ukrainian air force said, adding that 57 had been intercepted and another 67 jammed.

One person was wounded in drone attacks on the Odesa region and another in the city of Zhitomir, according to local officials.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said today that its air defences had shot down five Ukrainian drones in the border region of Bryansk, as well as three drones over the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Five people were wounded when Ukrainian forces shelled the city of Horlivka in the partially occupied Donetsk region, the city’s Russian-installed Mayor Ivan Prikhodko said.