KYIV — As US President Trump met his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders at the White House yesterday - Russia launched its heaviest aerial attack on Ukraine since July.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched 270 drones and 10 missiles overnight, which is the largest aerial attack on Ukraine since July 31, according to a CNN tally.

Four missiles and 16 drones slipped through Ukraine’s air defenses, the air force statement showed.

Russia’s strikes killed eight people and wounded 54 others across Ukraine in the 24-hours to Tuesday morning.

Five people were killed by Russian attacks on towns behind the front lines in the Donetsk region, while three were killed and 33 wounded in Russian strikes on the city of Zaporizhzhia, according to military authorities in the two regions.

Russian attacks also wounded civilians in Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk and Nikopol.

At least 1,471 households and 119 businesses lost power Tuesday after Russia launched a “massive attack” on the Poltava region of Ukraine’s northeast, the regional military administrator Volodymyr Kohut said today.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian lawmaker has told CNN that even though people in her country want the war to end, they will not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word in peace talks.

“There is no way that we will trust Putin and whatever he’s saying, not after everything that we have been through and not after all the killings and all the destruction he produced, ” said Inna Sovsun, a member Ukraine’s parliament.

Sovsun said people are tired and, despite the high-level talks between world leaders, there was no indication on the ground that anything was changing.

“We are seeing nightly attacks. We had an air raid alert here in Kyiv at four in the morning,” she said.

Sovsun called for solid promises from the US and Europe, including “peacekeeping missions on the ground.”

“In order to prove for the Ukrainians, for the Ukrainian leadership, that this is real this time, that we will not be left alone in case there is another attack from Russia, I think something more tangible needs to take place,” she said.

European leaders, including Zelensky, see a ceasefire as a necessary condition for negotiations to end the war. US President Donald Trump, however, is more focused on securing a peace deal — a position the Kremlin has echoed. — CNN