Zelenskyy Meets With Pope As Russia Launches Major Drone Assault On Ukraine

Sun, 18 May 2025 22:39:11 +0000
World

Pope Leo XIV met one-on-one with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as the Ukrainian leader looked to the Roman Catholic Church's leader to help push for a cessation of fighting in Russia's nearly 39-month-old war on Ukraine.

Leo's May 18 meeting with Zelenskyy came after the pontiff was formally installed and was only one of a handful of private meetings he held after the ceremonies.

"The martyred Ukraine is waiting for negotiations for a just and lasting peace to finally happen," Leo said in a prayer after the mass.

Zelenskyy's office* **later released photos of the Ukrainian leader** *and the pope, along with Zelenskyy's wife, Olena, and his foreign and defense ministers.

"We thank the Vatican for its readiness to become a platform for direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. We are ready for dialogue in any format for the sake of real results," Zelenskyy was quoted as saying.

Earlier, the Ukrainian leader also met with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of the Vatican ceremonies. It was their first meeting since a remarkably acrimonious clash in the White House Oval Office in February.

Following the meeting with Vance, the Ukrainian president's office said he briefed Vance and Rubio on what he labeled as the "unrealistic conditions" set by Russian negotiators in peace talks in Istanbul.

"I reaffirmed that Ukraine is ready to be engaged in real diplomacy and underscored the importance of a full and unconditional ceasefire as soon as possible," *Zelensky later wrote on X**.*

Hundreds of dignitaries and an estimated 200,000 members of the public jammed into St Peter's Square to view the installation ceremonies, 10 days after Leo became the first American head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.

Zelenskyy's meeting with the pope comes days after Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held the first face-to-face talks in more than three years, in a bid to halt the fighting.

There was little progress to that end, however, the sides did agree to conduct a major exchange of prisoners-of-war.

Russia has rejected calls by Ukraine, European countries, and the United States for a 30-day cease-fire in the war, now well into its fourth year.

**Russia Barrages Ukraine With Drones**

Overnight, Moscow launched a major barrage of drone strikes on Ukraine, even as US President Donald Trump pledged he would speak with Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine's military said Russia fired 273 drones at Ukrainian targets, one of the largest since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The military claimed it intercepted or downed at least 88 drones and that about 130 failed to reach their targets.

A 28-year-old woman was killed and a 4-year-old child was among the injured in a drone strike in a *district* outside the capital, Kyiv, the regional governor said.

A day earlier, a Russian drone strike hit a minibus carrying civilians in the Sumy region near the Russian border, killing nine people and wounding several others, Ukrainian authorities said.

In a post on his Truth Social network on May 17, Trump said he would speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on May 19, as well as Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"The subjects of the call will be...stopping the 'bloodbath' that is killing, on average, more than 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade," Trump wrote.

Trump earlier had said that "nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together."

"We have to get together," Trump told Fox News in an interview, saying he was optimistic about engaging with Putin but is ready to apply pressure on Russia if necessary. "I think we'll make a deal with Putin.... [I] will use leverage on Putin if I have to."

There was no immediate confirmation of the planned call from Kyiv or Moscow.

A day earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a Trump-Putin meeting to discuss bilateral ties, Ukraine, and other matters is "certainly necessary" but would take time to prepare.

**Civilian Deaths In Ukraine**

Mykola Kalashny, head of the Kyiv regional administration, said the May 18 attack in the Obukhiv district hit a private home and that an apartment building nearby was damaged.

On May 17, Ukraine's National Police charged that Russian forces had deliberately targeted the minibus, which was being used as an *intercity bus* and was hit near the town of Bilopillya, not far from the Russian border.

"This day will become Black Saturday in the history of our town," said Bilopillya administration chief Yuriy Zarko. Periods of mourning were announced in Bilopillya and in the Sumy region, which is the site of frequent Russian attacks.

A surviving passenger, Andriy, lay in a hospital bed, his head and shoulder bandaged and bloodied cuts on his face.

"When I raised my head [after the blast], the doors were completely gone. I saw a man under the [exit] in a pool of blood," he told independent regional outlet Kordon.Media.

"I started driving and there was a blast," the driver, Viktor Vovk, told Kordon.Media. "It triggered the airbags; they shot into my face. I left the bus. There was a person on the ground right next to the bus in awful shape. Another person was crying from inside for help. I got inside and carried [the person] out as they were still alive. That’s all I could do to help until the police and ambulance arrived."

"Total horror, I can't find the words," he said.

There was no immediate comment from Russia, which claims it does not target civilians despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone on May 17. Rubio "emphasized President Trump's call for an immediate cease-fire," State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.

Rubio told reporters in Rome that the Vatican could be a venue for Russia-Ukraine peace talks. "I wouldn't call it a broker, but it certainly is a place that I would think that both sides would be comfortable coming," he said before a meeting a top Vatican official.

Germany Chancellor Friedrich Merz, meeting in Rome with Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, said the Ukraine-Russia talks had fallen short of his expectations, despite the "maximally constructive approach" of Kyiv's negotiating team.

**Prisoner Exchange Agreed**

At the Istanbul talks, negotiators agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners on each side in the near future, but there was no indication that the wide gaps between Russia and Ukraine on issues such as territory and a cease-fire were narrowed. European leaders joined Zelenskyy in condemning Moscow.

Nearly 40 months into the full-scale invasion, Russia now holds about one-fifth of Ukraine's territory but has fallen far short of Putin's goal of subjugating the country.

The only previous direct peace talks broke up in the spring of 2022 as the sides wrangled over major points of contention and amid revelations of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Bucha.

In those negotiations, Russia was seeking a deal that analysts said would have amounted to Kyiv's surrender, leaving Ukraine a permanently neutral country with a small and toothless military, limited sovereignty, and little or no access to Western security support.

Accounts from the May 16 talks indicate that Moscow's conditions have changed little in three years. But Russia has expanded its territorial demands, seeking control of four mainland regions it baselessly claims as its own.

According to a Ukrainian official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, the Russian delegation said there could be no cease-fire until Ukraine withdraws its troops from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson regions, which are now only partially Russian-occupied.

Russia also wants international recognition that those four regions and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia seized in 2014, belong to Russia.

Other demands included permanent neutrality for Ukraine, with no weapons of mass destruction and no Western troops stationed on its soil, as well as the renunciation of claims for compensation for the massive damage inflicted on Ukraine by the Russian invasion.