PUBLISHED on August 8, 2025, 1:25 PM EDT – Key Points and Summary – A new BBC Verify analysis has found that Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have more than doubled since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025.
-Despite Trump’s campaign promises to quickly end the war, his administration’s two temporary pauses on military aid shipments to Ukraine may have backfired, with critics like Senator Chris Coons arguing the moves emboldened Putin.
-With Russian munitions production also surging, Ukraine is facing its most intense air bombardment of the war, raising serious questions about the effectiveness of Trump’s current strategy.
The Ukraine War Just Won’t End…And Gets Worse…
WARSAW, POLAND – An investigation this month by the BBC Verify’s analysis team has determined Russia has more than doubled the number of drones and missiles it has fired towards Ukraine since United States President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. This rapid expansion of Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s cities has taken place despite Trump’s calls for a ceasefire both during the 2024 presidential campaign and since his January 2025 swearing-in.
The number and frequency of these air attacks had been steadily mounting under former President Joe Biden in 2024. Still, the UK state-owned broadcaster’s analysis reveals that those attacks increased sharply after Trump’s re-election victory in November 2024. Following his return to office in January, the number of recorded aerial attacks by Moscow subsequently reached their highest levels of the entire war.
Throughout his campaign, Trump had boasted that he intended to bring an end to the Ukraine war in just one day if the voters were to return him to office. He had also stated the belief during his 2024 campaign that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine “would never have happened in the first place” had a US president who the Kremlin “respected” held the office of the President at the time.
In the course of attempts to have Russian President Vladimir Putin agree to a ceasefire, Trump has been accused by his critics of favouring Russian interests over those of Ukraine. Those accusations peaked when his administration placed a hold on deliveries of air defense munitions and other military items to Ukraine on two separate occasions.
Starved For Munitions
These disruptions in the military air shipments—the first in March and then again in July—were later reversed by the president.
But these cutoffs in deliveries of munitions were imposed at the same time that Russia began steadily expanding missile and drone production. According to the Ukrainian Military Intelligence service (GUR), Russian ballistic missile production increased by 66 per cent over the past year.
The numbers analyzed by BBC Verify are based on the daily incident reports issued by the Ukrainian Air Force (PSU). They show that Russia launched 27,158 munitions between January 20, when Trump’s presidency began, and July 19. This compares with 11,614 over the final six months of Biden’s term.
“This brutal war was brought on by Joe Biden’s incompetence, and it has gone on for far too long,” White House deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said to BBC Verify. “President Trump wants to stop the killing, which is why he is selling American-made weapons to NATO members and threatening Putin with biting tariffs and sanctions if he does not agree to a ceasefire.”
Trump began his second term as the American President by issuing flattering statements to Putin. His charm offensive was believed to be aimed at moving Putin towards an agreement to a ceasefire and an eventual agreement on an end to hostilities. Russia’s air attacks did drop off from the attacks that had been almost daily fare during the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s presidency.
The Ukraine War is Back On
By February 2025, the attacks on Ukraine were back on again and climbing. This coincided with a delegation led by the new American Secretary of State Marco Rubio meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and a group of senior Russian operatives for a summit in Riyadh.
Rubio had billed these discussions as a starting point to bring the war to an end. They were then followed up by mediated negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Turkey. According to the PSU, these attacks on Ukraine hit their high point on July 9, when Moscow launched 748 drones and missiles towards Ukraine. More than a dozen people were wounded in the barrage, and two were killed.
Trump has expressed frustration and anger at the escalating Russian attacks on several occasions. Still, his mounting acrimony has had little to no impact on the level of Moscow’s air attack. On May 25, when Moscow had fired what was then the largest recorded air attack against Ukraine to date, Trump thundered, “What the hell happened to him [Putin]?”
Russia has since exceeded that number of combined drones and missiles launched against Ukraine on 14 separate occasions. Trump has then more recently responded with the demand that the Kremlin sign a peace deal with Ukraine by August 8.
Today, there is no end to the number of Russian munitions being fired against Ukraine, with explosions in and around the capital Kyiv becoming almost a daily activity for residents of the city.
“Every time you go to sleep, you don’t know if you’re going to wake up the next morning, and that’s just not a normal way to live,” said Dasha Volk, a journalist living in the city, who spoke to the BBC’s Ukrainecast news program in June.
“Every time you hear an explosion or a missile flying over your head, lots of thoughts are going through my mind – I’m going to die now, things like that,” she said.
Senator Chris Coons, a senior Democrat on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told BBC Verify that Trump’s two previous cutoffs of military aid and his conciliatory gestures to Putin may have been what convinced the former Russian KGB Lt. Col. that he could launch missiles at Ukraine to his heart’s content.
“It’s clear Putin feels emboldened by Trump’s weakness and has increased his vicious assault on the Ukrainian people, repeatedly attacking hospitals and maternity wards, the Ukrainian power grid, and other civilian sites,” he told the BBC.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Swamplaw Yankee
August 8, 2025 at 10:45 pm
Does the reader notice that the shills of Butcher tsarling Putin never argue when their orc ethnic group makes the whole Federation celebrate their first mass abduction of Ukrainian children? Was the first “Harvesting” of kiddies 950 years ago, 895 years ago? The shills just ignore the muscovites biggest GNP income producer of the PAST: kiddie human trafficking .
Nice synopsis of the latest with the MAGA POTUS. Reads well! What is the weak point!
The vassal Ruskie Federation must conform to the Han CCP Zi regime. No matter how many trillions of rubles Putin expends, the CCP Zi regime will covert fund unlimited drone production + military supplies. Zi controls his thralldom of North Korea and the UNLIMITED millions of human canon fodder that tsarling PUTIN MAY DESIRE.
Yes, drone/missile stats will go up, Soon the WEST will be calculated if drone reserves are at 2X or 3X. That is Zi has supplied the cash for a reserve of drones/missiles for a 24/7 period of emission of say 1000 drones per each hour in a 24 hour day.
Every reader know that the MAGA POTUS Trump is cognitively incapable of giving the WEST the Victory that is necessary. Trump is a born loser in understanding Putin’s booming SEX trade business in Ukrainian children of the last 11 years.
The WEST needs to have at least double the amount of defence drones/missiles in reserve and instantly ready for the drones the orc genociders will emit/launch each hour. Zelensky just will not know in advance where exactly in Ukraine the ruskie butchers will desire to genocide Ukrainians.
Talking about more drones is useless. The context is getting enough cash in the WEST to get Ukraine up in a couple of months to a minimum of 1X of drones for defence. Notice that MAGA POTUS Trump just talks death for Ukrainians as he fake cons a future magic negotiation where Trump must “DEAL” away to master Putin stolen Ukrainian homes, farms, factories, fields, forests and little children.
MAGA Trump can not speak in public about 1X or 2X for the USA or even a place like Taiwan. The USA has zero missile reserves of hardly anything. The USA is defenceless as POTUS Trump tries to force Ukraine to become as defenceless to Putin’s stated aggression as the USA factually is.
With the Zi covert cash guarantee, the ruble can crash to zero. Walmart, etc., will keep Putin going eternally as Trump allows US companies keep on only buying made by HAN CCP products.
With a as little as a 2X reserve of drones, vassal Putin can eliminate any Baltic country or Bugaria, Rumania, as Zi pleases. The USA troops in the Baltic will just cower and die as Putin shoots 1000 drones/missiles per hour for days on end.
The op-ed very politely introduces the concept of “Trump’s weakness”! Wow! Finally. The MCI psychology of Trump’s is finally open for an initial debate.
But, that is well known by the tsarling Putin Sex Trade business. Trump will eternally give the ruskie sex traders another few weeks of free, no-cost POTUS gift cuddling of abused Ukrainian children. Trump will never stand up firmly and demand a pre-payment from Putin of $10,000,000 in US Gold Bullion for each and every human trafficked Ukrainian as due compensation and reparation for 11 years of table top dancing: ruskie style.
So, Senator Coons, Democrat, has popped open the question that the op-ed alludes to. As Ukrainians receive daily genocide from the ancient 1000 year old genocide need of peasant russians, POTUS Trump will fake, scam and push con negotiations that unilaterally, only he, the master dealer, can adjudicate.
Will the USA MAGA rank and file, will the Democrat voter allow another 3 years of Trump style POTUS lack of leadership? Who can predict that? -30-