Russia seizes Ukrainian border villages as its bombing campaign slows

Russian forces have taken four border villages in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, a local official said Tuesday, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had ordered troops to establish a buffer zone along the border.

Sumy borders Russia’s Kursk region, where a surprise Ukrainian incursion last year captured a pocket of land in the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II. The long border is vulnerable to Ukrainian incursions, Putin said, and creating a buffer zone could help Russia prevent further cross-border attacks there.

Meanwhile, a Russian bombing campaign that had escalated in recent days slowed overnight, with far fewer Russian drones targeting Ukrainian towns and cities.

Moscow’s invasion has shown no signs of stopping despite months of intense U.S.-led efforts to secure a ceasefire and get traction for peace talks. Since Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Turkey on May 16 for their first direct talks in three years, a large prisoner exchange has been the only tangible outcome, but negotiations have brought no significant breakthrough.

The U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said Putin has not yet delivered a promised memorandum that the Russian leader told U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call on May 19 would outline the framework for a possible peace agreement.

The Kremlin has also ruled out the Vatican as a venue for negotiations, he said. ‘‘We would have liked to have it at the Vatican and we were pretty set to do something like that, but the Russians didn’t want to go there … so I think Geneva may be the next stop,’’ Kellogg told the Fox News Channel.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said his country also was ready to host another round of peace talks.

Between Friday and Sunday, Russia launched about 900 drones at Ukraine, officials said, amid a spate of large-scale bombardments. On Sunday night, Russia launched its biggest drone attack of the 3-year-old war, firing 355 drones.

From Monday to Tuesday, Russia fired 60 drones at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its defenses downed 99 Ukrainian drones overnight over seven Russian regions.

The weekend surge in Russian bombardments drew a rebuke from Trump, who said Putin had gone ‘‘crazy.’’ That comment brought a sharp Kremlin reaction Monday, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticizing ‘‘emotional reactions’’ to events.

He took a milder tone Tuesday, hailing U.S. peace efforts and saying that ‘‘the Americans and President Trump have taken a quite balanced approach.’’

But Trump kept up the rhetorical pressure, saying in a social media post that Putin was ‘‘playing with fire!’’

‘‘What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD," he said.

In Sumy, Russian forces are trying to advance deeper after capturing villages, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration.

Ukrainian forces are trying to hold the line, he said, adding that residents of the villages were evacuated earlier, and there is no immediate threat to civilians.

Putin visited the Kursk region last week for the first time since Moscow claimed last month that it drove Ukrainian forces out of the area where they captured land last August. Kyiv officials have denied the claim.

The long border remains vulnerable to Ukrainian incursions, Putin said. He said he told the Russian military to create a ‘‘security buffer zone’’ along the frontier but provided no public details of where the proposed zone would be or how far it would stretch.

Putin said a year ago that a Russian offensive at the time aimed to create a buffer zone in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. That could have helped protect Russia’s Belgorod border region, where frequent Ukrainian attacks have embarrassed the Kremlin.

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Davies reported from Manchester, England. Darlene Superville in Washington and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine