Russian missiles killed 11 people overnight in strikes on Ukraine’s eastern city of Dobropillia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, saying such attacks “prove that Russia’s goals are unchanged.”

The attacks come as the Ukrainian war is at a critical point, with the United States having halted military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv as part of efforts to pressure it into accepting a peace agreement. The move has left Ukraine even more vulnerable to Russian attacks.

On Friday, after threatening Russia with sanctions to force through a ceasefire, US President Donald Trump said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was “doing what anybody else would do” in taking advantage of the current battlefield dynamics.

In addition to those killed, the latest strikes injured more than 30 others, Zelensky said, including five children.

Authorities said that more people could be trapped under the rubble, with at least eight residential buildings in the area damaged in the attack.

The Ukrainian president described the strikes as “a vile and inhumane tactic of intimidation that Russians often use.”

“Therefore, it is crucial to continue to do everything to protect lives, strengthen our air defense, and increase sanctions against Russia,” Zelensky said, adding that “everything that helps Putin finance the war must break.”

Zelensky has said he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia next week ahead of negotiations between Kyiv and Washington. After that, his team will stay in Saudi Arabia “to work with our American partners,” he added.

Local officials said on Saturday that over the past day, Russian attacks had killed at least 23 people and injured more than 50 in eastern and southern Ukraine.

In addition to those killed in Dobropillia, Russian attacks elsewhere in Donetsk killed nine others and wounded 13, according to local authorities.

Ukraine’s emergency service said that a drone attack in the eastern Kharkiv region also killed three people and injured seven, while five people were injured in attacks on the southern Kherson region, according to local officials.

Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 79 out of 145 drones launched by Russia overnight, while 54 drones did not reach their target.

Russia also used at least three missiles in its attack, the air force said, adding that it shot down at least one of the projectiles.

The attacks came just days after a deadly Russian airstrike on Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Zelensky.

This follows a statement from the Vatican press office on Saturday that described “a good response to therapy” and a “gradual, slight improvement” since his episodes of acute respiratory failure on Monday.

The Vatican source said that this improvement was due to the “gas exchange” in the lungs and the oxygenation of the blood. However, the risk remains of another breathing crisis remains and the prognosis is still reserved, the source emphasized.

The pope continues to alternate between high flow oxygen therapy during the day and non-invasive ventilation at night, the Vatican press office said.

On Saturday morning, Francis prayed inside a chapel. In the afternoon, he rested and engaged in work activities, the office said, adding that Sunday’s Angelus prayer will again be released in written form.

Since Monday’s incident, the pope has remained in stable condition and received respiratory and motor physiotherapy. He released a pre-recorded audio message on Thursday thanking his supporters for their prayers.

Uncertainty has continued to swirl in the Vatican throughout Francis’ extended hospital stay.

The seismic shift of the past fortnight is hard to digest.

Ukraine and its allies hope, deeply, that the plank Kyiv has been slammed in the face with, is – to paraphrase US President Donald Trump’s presidential envoy to Ukraine – just to get its attention. That the White House is merely pausing military aid and intelligence sharing, demanding about half of the country’s mineral wealth to repay an alleged debt, and expecting a public apology from its president, as a negotiating ploy. That this is just tough talk ahead of a hard deal.

But a deeper change is apparent, and one that Europe has been reluctant to accept, and is scrambling to adjust to. The Trump administration sees itself not as an ally to Ukraine and its European backers, but as an intermediary between them and Moscow, hoping to rehabilitate Russia on the world stage. Trump has said he is “seriously considering” more sanctions on Moscow. Yet he has not applied them. So far, Russia has only tasted carrots and felt no sticks.

The pressure applied so far ahead of any deal is that of the contractor on its subcontractors – America on Ukraine and Europe – squeezing their terms to create a more attractive proposition for Russia. Hopes are high that a summit in Riyadh on Tuesday, between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team, will heal the Kyiv-Washington relationship.

This is the chasm that lies beneath Trump’s insistence that Zelensky “commit to peace.” Does Trump mean an indefinable vibe only he can determine? Does he mean the germs of a European peace plan, which so far involves a prisoner swap, a partial ceasefire at sea, in the air and on energy infrastructure, followed by a limited European peacekeeping force? (Russian officials have rejected much of this already). Or does he mean another version of peace that may be concocted between Moscow and Washington, without Europe or Ukraine at the table?

This last idea should be the most troubling for European security and Ukrainian sovereignty. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, denied that a draft deal discussed in March 2022 in Istanbul – a rushed peace bid which fell apart in the early stages of the war due to the massacres in Irpin of Ukrainian civilians – would be the framework. But he called it a “departure point, at least.”

These proposed accords demanded that Ukraine relinquish its ambitions to join NATO, an aim which is now enshrined in the country’s constitution. The draft deal also demanded major cultural changes, the least of which was Russian being made an official language.

But above all, it tried to set limits on the armed forces Ukraine could retain which would have made them significantly smaller than Russia’s vast military. Its essence was capitulation. Not in terms of submitting to peace. But in removing Ukraine’s ability to convincingly defend itself in the event that Russia, as Ukraine says it has done more than 20 times in the last decade, violates a ceasefire and attacks again.

The pressure being laid onto Ukraine would suggest Tuesday’s meeting in Riyadh – already extremely high stakes after the Oval Office catastrophe just over a week ago – is not intended to be a simple, glad-handing moment of making up. We may learn the kind of peace Trump envisions, and how much of that mirrors Moscow’s ambitions.

Europe’s future security depends on how much “art of the deal” there is in this deal. Trump’s accustomed business world is one where he would seek to make a purchase or a contract attractive to the other side. Perhaps he might fire the head of the subcontractor if the other side didn’t like them (hence the loose talk of Zelensky’s fitness for office). He might screw down on their terms to improve margins (pausing military aid). He might flatter his prospective client (his reluctance to speak ill of Putin).

But the deal would ultimately involve the purchase of bricks and mortar, or their construction: a simple and predictable future course of actions or change in ownership of property, protected and cosseted by lawyers and courts – by the rule of law. If the other side broke the deal, Trump could sue. The precedents and courses of action were well-defined, and the rule of law on his side in ensuring the terms of the deal were kept.

Russia is not a massive fan of the rule of law. It negotiates normally to buy time to pursue its military goals. It seized the eastern Ukrainian town of Debaltseve literally during the first days of a ceasefire in 2015, negotiated following its limited invasion of Ukraine the previous year. Putin was raised in the KGB, lives on a diet of “maskirovka” (masking) and openly denied it was his troops who invaded Crimea in 2014, before laughingly accepting they were actually his a few years later. Were he a business, his credit rating would probably be distressed.

But Trump’s belief, his hunch, that Putin can be trusted and wants peace, is now guiding US policy, and rewriting America’s role in the largest war in Europe since the 1940s.

Signs of the damage this psychological blow has inflicted are already bubbling to the surface. Ukrainian forces are in peril in the Kursk region, and may lose this sliver of Russian land that was their only territorial card at the negotiating table. If they fall, the North Korean and Russian troops engaged there can then turn their attention to the rest of the eastern frontline where Moscow has made slow progress for months.

Ballistic missile and drone attacks have caused a horrific loss of civilian life this weekend, even after Trump threatened sanctions for Moscow “pounding” Ukraine, and may worsen as the pause in military aid reduces the US-supplied Patriots that Ukraine has depended on for air defense for its cities.

So far, the collapse in American support for Ukraine has mostly been confined to wild theater in foreign capitals. This week, we may learn details of the unclear peace Trump seeks. And then the grim toll of these remote, sanitary hotel meetings in suits will likely turn into dust and loss across Ukraine.

The Apostolic Palace in the Vatican is home to the Holy See’s Secretariat of State, the engine room of the Catholic Church’s central administration. Entering the offices on the third floor of the Renaissance palazzo, you walk past frescoes of some of the first maps of the world, a reminder that the church had a global vision and influence long before globalization came into fashion.

Now, with Pope Francis entering his fourth week in hospital, those working in the Apostolic Palace are grappling with the continuing uncertainty over the pope’s health. The same is true for everyone working in the Vatican.

The two highest-ranking secretariat officials are Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State, and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the “sostituto,” or “substitute,” who acts as a papal chief of staff. They have seen Francis in hospital on at least two occasions. During normal times, they would individually have a scheduled weekly audience with the pope and remain in regular contact with him.

Parolin, a mild mannered, thoughtful prelate, is an experienced diplomat from northern Italy who leads engagement in geopolitics and has been instrumental in brokering the Holy See’s agreement with China. Some talk about him as a future pope and it was Parolin who led the first of the daily prayer sessions for Francis’ health in St. Peter’s Square.

Peña Parra, a church diplomat from Venezuela, coordinates the work of the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration. A decisive and resilient character, he underwent a fierce cross-examination last summer in London in a landmark legal case brought against the Vatican over a real estate deal dispute. The judge sided with the Vatican – and Peña Parra – on the key points.

It is these two officials who oversee much of the day-to-day church government as Francis remains hospitalized. The Roman Curia is made up of different departments – known as dicasteries – located in offices in and around Vatican City State and Rome. The departments, such as those for appointing bishops, continue to hold meetings and carry out their day-to-day tasks.

While the work continues, it does so at a slower pace. Heads of state coming to Rome to meet the pope stay away, as do groups of bishops travelling to the Eternal City. Major events which rely on the convening power of the papacy are put on hold. The prevailing mood in the Vatican is anxiety and a sense of uncertainty.

“(We are) very used to him suddenly ringing for an opinion or to share some observation that he’s made. So, in that sense, things have gone very quiet.”

The cardinal, who is from the United Kingdom, explained that “the work goes on” even though it is an “uncertain period” with raised levels of anxiety.

“But we are hopeful that the good Lord will help him along and restore his health,” he added. “And if not, we can at least back him up by our prayers in sustaining his health at a moment when he needs our support. He’s always willing… to help us and it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to help him when he’s in need.”

The 88-year-old pope is still signaling that he’s governing the church from the hospital. Even as he battles pneumonia in both lungs, Francis is signing off documents “from the Gemelli hospital,” appointing bishops and a NASA scientist as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Sciences and calling the Catholic parish in Gaza.

It is also the pope himself who asked the doctors and the Vatican communication apparatus to provide the detailed daily bulletins on his health. And, on Thursday night, people heard the pope’s voice for the first time since his hospitalization. In what must have taken a big effort, Francis, struggling to get his words out after weeks of respiratory issues, thanked the people in St. Peter’s Square for their prayers.

Each night cardinals and senior Vatican officials gather in St. Peter’s Square to pray for Francis. The mood has been quiet and somber. Anthony Ekpo, a Vatican official and author of “The Roman Curia: History, Theology, and Organization,” said that the curia’s job had become focused on “prayerful support for the pope” along with “continuing the task of assisting him in the work of governing the Universal Church.”

The pope’s hospitalization has changed the tenor of the Catholic Church’s jubilee year, a once-in-every-25-years event focused on pilgrimage and forgiveness. A jam-packed schedule of events with the pope had been planned, but in Francis’ absence, senior cardinals have been tasked with leading the celebrations.

All of this is creating a pre-conclave atmosphere. Vatican observers watch to see how each cardinal deputizing for the pope acts, and whether they are papabile (literally “pope-able,” or a potential candidate to be pope).

Interest in papal elections has become intensified by the popularity of the movie “Conclave,” which several senior church figures have watched.

Francis, who despite physical difficulties has always remained mentally alert, has ensured no figure exercises outsize influence in his absence.

He has two personal secretaries, both priests, assisting him up at the hospital but they remain out of the public eye. Throughout his pontificate, he has rotated secretaries, refused a personal spokesman and never allowed a figure to emerge as “deputy.”

In contrast, John Paul II’s long periods of ill-health and hospitalization created a power vacuum in Rome. As his health faltered, top officials in the Vatican took control of key decisions with his private secretary, now Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, becoming a powerful gatekeeper. A similar role was carried out for Benedict XVI by Archbishop Georg Gänswein.

No one knows how long Francis will remain in hospital and the prognosis of his complex condition remains “reserved,” according to Vatican sources.

Friends of the pope say he is determined to get out of hospital and return to the Casa Santa Marta, his residence since the 2013 conclave. The Santa Marta is also where the cardinals stay during a conclave. Francis’ recovery could take many weeks, and the prospect he might resign has been speculated upon.

From March 9 to 14, the leaders of the Roman Curia will embark on spiritual exercises for the season of Lent, which this year focuses on “the hope of eternal life.” During this period, believers seek to spiritually follow Christ into the wilderness of the desert for a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving in preparation for Easter.

For the Vatican, the Lent of 2025 takes place in a desert of uncertainty as the pope’s health hangs in the balance. They are hoping – and praying – that a way ahead emerges.