Russia waited to launch the mass strike on Ukraine until after Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated US President Donald Trump on his birthday on 14 June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says, per Ukrinform.
His statements came during a visit to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine's 1000-year-old monastery, damaged by two Russian drones in the latest missile attack on Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro.
When asked by a journalist what he would tell Putin after the attack, the President replied: "We will say."
Zelenskyy: Russia timed strike around Putin-Trump birthday call
Zelenskyy explicitly linked the timing of the Russian mass strike to the Putin-Trump diplomatic engagement, saying that the Russian ruler "as always, absolutely cynically congratulated the US president, and after that, launched a mass strike on Ukraine."
"I think it is no coincidence that for several days they not only collected missiles — we saw they have the corresponding forces — they waited so as not to do it before congratulating President Trump," Zelenskyy said.
Otherwise, the president argued, the US President's team and Trump himself would have raised the question of the mass strike.
Budanov: Russia's strike on Lavra is crime against Christian faith
Meanwhile, Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Budanov called the Lavra strike "a crime against Christian faith and all world Orthodoxy" in a Telegram statement.
"The vile essence of Russia is in the scorched earth tactic that the occupier constantly reproduces," Budanov claimed.
Budanov added that during World War II, Soviet security forces had already destroyed the Lavra's Dormition Cathedral, but independent Ukraine restored the shrine.
The historical reference draws a parallel between the Soviet and the Russian Federation's destruction of the same religious site. Budanov's framing positions the current Russian strike as a continuation of a multi-generational pattern of Russia's intent to destroy.
Soviet destruction of Dormition Cathedral in 1941
The Dormition Cathedral is one of the oldest and most architecturally significant Orthodox cathedrals in the world, dating back to the 11th century.
It was destroyed by explosives on 3 November 1941, three weeks after German forces occupied Kyiv. Soviet official sources blamed Nazi forces, but post-Soviet historical research using declassified secret archives established Soviet responsibility. They showed that the cathedral was destroyed as part of Soviet sabotage operations against German occupation forces.
The cathedral was reconstructed in independent Ukraine in the late 1990s and consecrated in 2000.
