'I don't know what the hell happened to Putin,' says Trump as Russia unleashes 3rd consecutive attack on Ukraine

U.S. President Donald Trump voiced strong disapproval of Russia’s weekend bombardment of Ukraine, telling reporters that he's "not happy with Putin.”

"He's killing a lot of people," Trump said to reporters at an airport in New Jersey before returning to Washington on May 25. "I don't know what the hell happened to Putin, I've known him for a long time..."

Trump's comments followed Russia’s massive air assault on Ukraine over the weekend, during which more than 600 drones and dozens of missiles were launched from Friday to Sunday in one of the heaviest attacks of the war to date.

At least 12 people were killed, including three children, and 79 injured in strikes that targeted numerous cities including Kyiv overnight on May 25. The Russian forces attacked the city of Kyiv, as well as Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Sumy, Poltava regions. More than 80 residential buildings have been damaged.

Trump, who has pushed for a ceasefire in the war now in its fourth year, recently held a two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin during which Russia reiterated its refusal for a full ceasefire in the war in Ukraine while the U.S. failed to respond with any significant pressure.

Speaking to reporters on May 25, Trump once again said that new sanctions on Moscow could be on the table. "I’ve always gotten along with him," Trump said of Putin. "But he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people (...) We're in the middle of talking and he's shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities. I don't like it at all."

Earlier in the day, Trump's special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg reacted to Russia's overnight large-scale attack on Ukraine on May 25, calling for the end to hostilities.

"The indiscriminate killing of women and children at night in their homes is a clear violation of the 1977 Geneva Peace Protocols designed to protect innocents. These attacks are shameful," Kellogg said on X without explicitly naming Russia. "Stop the killing. Ceasefire now."

Meanwhile, Republican Don Bacon said "peace talks are having zero effect on Putin."

"His goal is to dominate Ukraine & he won’t stop until he realizes he cannot win," Bacon wrote on X following the attack. "The U.S. & Allies must arm Ukraine to the teeth, sanction Russia to the max, & confiscate the $300B in overseas Russian assets."