NATO scrambles warplanes for second night after Trump branded Putin ‘absolutely crazy’

NATO was forced to scramble warplanes for the second night running as Vladimir Putin ignored Donald Trump’s pleas and staged more barbaric strikes on Ukraine.

The US president accused the Kremlin dictator of going “absolutely CRAZY…needlessly killing a lot of people”, while threatening tougher sanctions. Despite the threats, there is still no word of exactly what action the US will take against Moscow.

After the most intense day of aerial attacks on Sunday when his attacks killed multiple civilians including three children, Putin carried on targeting Kyiv for the third day in a row with sirens sounding for six hours, while also bombarding multiple other regions of Ukraine.

• CNN anchor stops broadcast for breaking news - and it's a major blow for Trump
• America's mysterious 'UFO base' uncovered by CIA is new alien hotspot

The attacks on Monday have left at least six people dead, while the heavy strikes triggered NATO to fly aircraft from Poland as a defensive measure.

A statement from the armed forces command said, “Due to the attack by the Russian Federation, which is carrying out strikes on objects located in the territory of Ukraine, Polish and allied aviation has begun operating in our airspace.”

They said the commander “activated all available forces and resources at his disposal.

“The on-duty fighter pairs have been scrambled, and the ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems have reached the highest state of readiness. The steps taken are aimed at ensuring security in the areas bordering the threatened areas.”

Trump expressed shock after Putin’s brazen attacks on Ukraine, saying, “Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.

“I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia.”

As if to prove Trump’s analysis, Putin's mouthpiece Dmitry Medvedev produced a map showing how the Kremlin tyrant wants to turn the whole of Ukraine - apart from a tiny sliver on Poland’s border - into a “buffer zone”.

Medvedev - an ex-president of Russia and now a top security and political official - said: “If military aid to the [Kyiv] regime continues, the buffer zone could look like this.”

Meanwhile, the violence escalated to shocking levels across Ukraine. In Odesa, a man was killed after covering his girlfriend with his body. After receiving 70 per cent burns on his body he managed to let her and his dog out to be rescued, according to reports.

In the Kharkiv region, at least six settlements were under fire with two women, aged 84 and 58 killed. A man aged 60 and a woman aged 76 and 68 were injured.

Russian troops shelled the village of Kindrativka in the Sumy region with artillery, killing a man, and wounding another. In Khotyn, a 48-year-old resident died from artillery shelling and another civilian, a 52-year-old man, was injured.

Russia staged a massive attack on a military airfield in Starokostiantyniv, Khmelnytskyi region, with one witness describing it, saying, “It burned like hell on earth…”

Ukraine continued to fight back in the face of the onslaught - again causing mayhem at Russian airports, especially Moscow, as they were forced into shutdowns due to swarming kamikaze drones.

Moscow hubs Vnukovo, Domodedovo, and Zhukovsky all suffered closures - as did Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Cherepovets airports.

Leading Putin TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov admitted that Ukrainian fighters are holding up Russia - claiming if the war was against Britain and other Western countries, Moscow would have won by now.

“The [Ukrainian] enemy is strong and cunning,” he told viewers, “And we win not by numbers, but by skill, by preparation.

“If they were not like us... but like the Germans, French and British, we'd have [finished] them… There'd be nothing left of them. Just nothing. The [Westerners] don't understand what war is,” he said.

According to The Institute for the Study of War: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is leveraging long-range strikes against Ukrainian cities, aggressive rhetorical campaigns, and excessive pessimism in the West about the battlefield situation in Ukraine in a multi-pronged effort to degrade Ukrainian morale and convince the West that a Russian victory in Ukraine is inevitable and that supporting Ukraine is futile,” said the ISW.

Yet, “the battlefield situation has shifted dramatically since early 2022, and three years of manpower and material losses have significantly degraded the Russian military's ability to conquer Ukraine.

“Putin remains deeply committed to distracting from the realities of the battlefield situation, however, as bringing about the cessation of Western military assistance to Ukraine is Russia's only real hope of winning this war.”

Zelensky vowed new sanctions including “against representatives of Russian mafia groups who significantly helped the formation of the Putin regime and are still associated with it”.

Trump also criticised Zelensky who had demanded a harsher response from the US to Putin’s missile and drone strikes.

The President said, “Everything out of his [Zelensky's] mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.”