Russia’s Palm Sunday attack against Ukraine triggers calls for more US pressure on Putin

A devastating Russian attack against Ukraine on Palm Sunday, coming days after Russian President Vladimir Putin shook hands with President Trump’s top negotiator, is raising doubt about the U.S.’s strategy in ceasefire talks with Moscow. 

Ukraine, its allies and supporters say the Sumy strike, which killed at least 34 people, including two children, and injured 119, is further evidence that Russia is not committed to any type of ceasefire and needs to be backed into a corner under sanctions. 

“Only real pressure on Russia can stop this,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted Monday on the social platform X. 

“Everyone knows: this war was initiated by Russia alone. And today, it is clear that Russia alone chooses to continue it — with blatant disregard for human lives, international law, and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X.

“Strong measures are needed to impose a ceasefire on Russia. France is working tirelessly toward this goal, alongside its partners.”

The Trump administration has sent conflicting messages on the Ukraine-Russia war, with Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, blasting Russia in a post on X for a targeted attack on civilians. That message appeared to contradict Trump’s earlier assertions that the Russian strike was a “mistake”. 

“Today’s Palm Sunday attack by Russian forces on civilian targets in Sumy crosses any line of decency,” Kellogg wrote. “There are scores of civilian[s] dead and wounded. As a former military leader, I understand targeting and this is wrong. It is why President Trump is working hard to end this war.”

Russia claimed the strike on Sumy targeted a gathering of senior military officers and accused Kyiv of using civilians as human shields by holding military meetings in the city’s center. 

Trump on Sunday said he’d been told the attack, which he described as “terrible,” had been a mistake.

Asked what he meant when he said it was a “mistake,” Trump demurred and blamed former President Biden for allowing the war between Russia and Ukraine to start.

“They made a mistake. I believe it was — look, you’re gonna ask them,” Trump said. “This is Biden’s war. This is not my war. This is a war that was under Biden. … I’m just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives.”

On Monday, Trump put the most blame on Putin for starting the war with Ukraine, but also criticized Zelensky and Biden.

“Let’s say Putin number one, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky,” Trump said. 

Trump brushed off a question from a reporter on Zelensky’s offer to buy Patriot air defense systems and doubled down on criticism against the Ukrainian leader. 

“He’s always looking to purchase missiles,” Trump said flippantly, appearing to blame Zelensky for Russia’s invasion. 

Trump may also have been unhappy with remarks by Zelensky in an interview with CBS’s “60 minutes.” In the interview, Zelensky criticized Trump and Vice President Vance as not only having a shift in tone on the war, but a “shift in reality.” Zelensky also said the two are vulnerable to Russia’s “information policy” — its propaganda campaign that seeks to justify its unprovoked war of aggression.  

Zelensky took a bold move in making these comments.

Ukraine, and Europe, are highly dependent on America’s military power, and neither are in a position to make up any shortfall that would come from Trump cutting off support.

Zelensky learned a hard lesson when Trump paused military deliveries and intelligence sharing with Ukraine for nearly two weeks, following the confrontation between the Ukrainian leader, Trump and Vance in the Oval Office at the end of February. 

“What happened with pausing weapons supply and intelligence sharing, was critical for us and this can never happen again, because this is crucial, not only for this war but for the future of Europe,” Oleksandra Ustinova, chair of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Temporary Special Commission on Arms Control, told The Hill. 

Ustinova was in Washington earlier this month reinforcing the argument on Capitol Hill that Kyiv is a reliable partner compared with Russia, and urging Congress to push for more weapons deliveries to Ukraine to strengthen Kyiv’s position in negotiations. 

“The key message to take from this meeting for us and around Capitol Hill, Ukraine has proved to be a reliable partner for the United States, we’ve signed every deal that is being asked from us, starting with the Budapest Memorandum when we gave up our nukes,” she said, referring to the 1994 agreement that was supposed to guarantee Ukraine’s security in exchange for it forfeiting the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons on its territory.

“They are trying to exhaust our air defense and this is why it’s critical for us, from our American partners — because nobody else can provide those — to protect our civilians while negotiations are going on,” Ustinova continued. 

“We’re fully supportive of negotiations. We are the number one country in this world who want this war to be over. But we want a full ceasefire, not a partial one that Putin can benefit from.”

The Sumy attack was one of the deadliest strikes on civilians throughout the war; it followed a Russian strike on April 4 against Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih that killed 20 people, including nine children. 

But these atrocities are unlikely to dramatically change Trump’s position or provide impetus for Europe to do more than what it is already doing, said Linas Kojala, CEO of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center based in Lithuania.

“This is unfortunately just a confirmation of the interpretation of the reality on the ground that Russia does not try to achieve any sort of ceasefire, that it still continues its push to occupy more territories, and does not regard any lives as sacrosanct,” he said. 

Kojala said there are some positive signals from the Trump administration that the U.S. is not immediately or completely abandoning Ukraine, that intelligence sharing is still being provided and sanctions on Russia are still in place and apparently at full force. 

“At least on the practical level, Ukraine is not yet pressured by the U.S. to lose this war by not getting access to things that they’ve gotten previously,” he said. “So that’s the only kind of thing that I could point to as a positive one.”

Kojala said it would take Europe between two and 10 years to try to scale up to reach the capacity of support the U.S. provides, citing only a few specific examples — U.S. intelligence capabilities, the use of Starlink satellites for communications and operations, American leadership in NATO and the U.S. nuclear umbrella. 

“If we lose all of it today, that’s irreplaceable,” he said.