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KYIV, Ukraine: Russia battered Ukraine’s energy facilities with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in its latest heavy bombardment of the country’s power grid, authorities said Thursday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepared to ask President Donald Trump at a White House meeting for more American-made air defenses and long-range missiles.
As he considers Zelensky’s push for US missiles, Trump said after Thursday’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that they will meet in Budapest, Hungary to try to bring the war to an end. No date for the meeting has been set.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he will discuss his call with Putin “and much more” when he meets Zelensky on Friday, adding that “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation.”
Meanwhile, eight Ukrainian regions experienced blackouts after the barrage, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, said. DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, reported outages in the capital, Kyiv, and said it had to stop its natural gas extraction in the central Poltava region due to the strikes. Natural gas infrastructure was damaged for the sixth time this month, Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company, said.
Russia fires hundreds of drones and 37 missiles
Zelensky said Russia fired more than 300 drones and 37 missiles at Ukraine overnight. He accused Russia of using cluster munitions and conducting repeated strikes on the same target to hit emergency crews and engineers working to repair the grid.
“This fall, the Russians are using every single day to strike our energy infrastructure,” Zelensky said on Telegram.
The Ukrainian power grid been one of Russia’s main targets since its invasion of its neighbor more than three years ago. Attacks increase as the bitterly cold months approach in a Russian strategy that Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing winter.” Russia says it aims only at targets of military value.
Ukraine has hit back by targeting oil refineries and related infrastructure that are crucial for Russia’s economy and war effort. Ukraine’s general staff said Thursday its forces struck Saratov oil refinery, in the Russian region of the same name, for the second time in two months. The facility is located some 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Moscow made no immediate comment on the claim.
Ukraine seeks air defenses and attack missiles
Ukrainian forces have resisted Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army, limiting it to a grinding war of attrition along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line snaking through eastern and southern regions.
But Ukraine, which is almost the size of Texas, is hard to defend from the air in its entirety, and Kyiv officials are seeking more Western help to fend against aerial attacks and strike back at Russia.
Zelensky was expected to arrive in the United States on Thursday, ahead of his Oval Office meeting with Trump on Friday.
Ukraine is seeking cruise missiles, air defense systems and joint drone production agreements from the United States, Kyiv officials say. Zelensky also wants tougher international economic sanctions on Moscow.
The visit comes amid signs that Trump is leaning toward stepping up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to break the deadlock in US-led peace efforts.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday in Brussels that if Russia won’t budge from its objections and refuses to negotiate a peace deal, Washington “will take the steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression.”
Also, Trump said Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally assured him that his country would stop buying Russian oil. That would deny Moscow income it needs to keep fighting in Ukraine.
Washington has hesitated over providing Ukraine with long-range missiles, such as Tomahawks, out of concern that such a step could escalate the war and deepen tensions between the United States and Russia.
But Trump has been frustrated by his inability to force an end to the war in Ukraine and has expressed impatience with Putin, whom he increasingly describes as the primary obstacle to a resolution.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment published late Wednesday that sending Tomahawks to Ukraine would not escalate the war and would only “mirror Russia’s own use of … long-range cruise missiles against Ukraine.”
Ukraine engages with American defense companies
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Economy Ministry said Thursday it has signed a memorandum of understanding with US company Bell Textron Inc. to cooperate in aviation technology.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based aerospace and defense company will open an office in Ukraine and establish a center for assembly and testing, while exchanging know-how and training Ukrainians in the United States, according to a ministry statement.
Ukraine, unsure what it can expect from Western allies, is keen to develop its own arms industry.
On Wednesday, a Ukrainian government delegation met during a US visit with prominent American weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
 

GREENBELT, Maryland: John Bolton, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser during his first term and later became a vocal critic, was charged Thursday with storing top secret records at home and sharing with relatives diary-like notes about his time in government that officials said contained classified information.
The 18-count indictment also suggests classified information was exposed when operatives believed linked to the Iranian regime hacked Bolton’s email account in 2021 and gained access to sensitive material he had shared. A Bolton representative told the FBI that his emails had been hacked, prosecutors say, but did not reveal that he had shared classified information through the account or that the hackers now had possession of government secrets.
The indictment sets the stage for a closely watched court case centering on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and who served for more than a year in Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019 and emerging as a harsh critic of the president. The investigation that produced the criminal case was well underway when Trump took office again this past January but burst into public view in August when the FBI searched his home in Maryland and his office in Washington
Bolton is now the third Trump adversary prosecuted in the last month, meaning the case will unfold against the backdrop of concerns the president is using his Justice Department to pursue political enemies and to spare allies from scrutiny. He foreshadowed that argument in a defiant statement Thursday in which he denied the charges and called them part of an “intensive effort” by Trump to “intimidate his opponents.”
“Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” Bolton said.
“The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career — records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Bolton lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a separate statement. “Like many public officials throughout history, Amb. Bolton kept diaries — that is not a crime. We look forward to proving once again that Amb. Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any information.”
The case follows separate indictments over the last month accusing former FBI Director James Comey of lying to Congress and New York Attorney General Letitia James of committing bank fraud and making a false statement, charges they both deny. Both those cases were filed in federal court in Virginia by a prosecutor Trump hastily installed in the position after growing frustrated that investigations into high-profile enemies had not resulted in prosecution.
The Bolton case, by contrast, was filed in Maryland by a US attorney who before being elevated to the job had been a career prosecutor in the office.
The indictmen is significantly more detailed than the Comey or James cases. It alleges, for instance, that Bolton shared more than 1,000 pages of information about day-to-day activities with two unnamed family members and stored and shared sensitive information about foreign adversaries that in some cases revealed details about sources and methods used by the government to collect intelligence.
One document related to a foreign adversary’s plans for a missile launch, while another detailed US government plans for covert action and included intelligence blaming an adversary for an attack, court papers say.
“There is one tier of justice for all Americans,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
Questions about Bolton’s handling of classified information date back years. He faced a lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation after leaving office related to information in his 2020 book “The Room Where it Happened,” which portrayed Trump as grossly uninformed about foreign policy.
The Trump administration asserted that Bolton’s manuscript included classified information that could harm national security if exposed. Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer contained classified information.
A search warrant affidavit that was previously unsealed said a National Security Council official had reviewed the book manuscript and told Bolton in 2020 that it appeared to contain “significant amounts” of classified information, some at a top-secret level.
Lowell has said that many of the documents seized in August had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Bolton’s book. He said many were decades old, from Bolton’s long career in the State Department, as an assistant attorney general and as the US ambassador to the United Nations.
Bolton also served in the Justice Department during President Ronald Reagan’s administration and was the State Department’s point man on arms control during George W. Bush’s presidency. Bolton was nominated by Bush to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, but the strong supporter of the Iraq war was unable to win Senate confirmation and resigned after serving 17 months as a Bush recess appointment. That allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate confirmation.
In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump’s third national security adviser. But his brief tenure was characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.
Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Bolton’s resignation. Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his 2020 book, including by alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to Ukraine to that country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump’s Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of his family.
Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.” Trump also said at the time that the book contained “highly classified information” and that Bolton “did not have approval” for publishing it.