Russia attacked Ukraine with a barrage of missiles and drones overnight, killing at least 16 people, injuring over 100 and trapping others, authorities said on Tuesday.
Russia unleashed 73 missiles and 656 drones across Ukraine, according to the country’s air force, with the main targets including Kyiv, the central city of Dnipro, and the eastern cities of Poltava, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed and suppressed 40 missiles and 602 drones.
The damage trapped some people under the rubble of apartment buildings. Emergency crews digging through the wreckage pulled out the body of a 3-year-old child and the bodies of a mother and her 8-year-old son in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, officials said.
At least four people were killed in Kyiv and 63 people were injured, including three children, Ukraine’s state emergency service said. Residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure were damaged in eight Kyiv districts.
At least 64 people were wounded in the capital, emergency services said.
The boom of explosions echoed through most of the night and into the early morning. Kyiv had been bracing for another mass attack for days, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia was preparing a renewed assault and urged people to remain cautious and seek shelter during air raid alerts.
In the Podilskyi district, there was partial damage to the upper floors of a nine-story building, trapping people under the rubble. Rescue operations were still underway in the early hours of the morning, even as the air raid alert remained in effect.
In the Solomianskyi district, a 20-story building and a 24-story building were damaged.
Olena Dniprovska, 65, and her husband Yevhen, 64, were injured in their apartment in Kyiv’s Podilskyi district during the attack.
“I went out into the corridor with the phone, and before I understood what happened, everything fell on my head, the glass, and the door blew off,” said Dniprovska, dried blood streaked across her face and a bandage wrapped around her chin. “I ran out into the front door and started calling my husband from the room, but he was also blown out by the blast wave.”
“Now I have nowhere to live, the apartment is completely destroyed, no doors, no windows, no balcony. You can step straight from the room out onto the street,” she said.
Ukrainian officials have been pressing allies for more air defense missiles to counter Russia’s ballistic missile attacks. While Ukraine continues to intercept a high percentage of drones, ballistic missiles remain a major vulnerability for the country’s air defenses.
Putin is keen to generate some positive news from the conflict that began with Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor and hasn’t gone according to plan.
Western officials and analysts say Ukrainian drones are pinning down Russian troops on the front line, choking Russian supply lines in occupied regions of Ukraine and disrupting oil facilities deep inside Russia that provide vital revenue for Moscow. That has made the war, which Moscow refers to as a “special military operation,” more visible to Russians and increased pressure on Putin.
U.S.-led peace efforts have fizzled out as the sides made no progress on key differences and after the Gulf and Middle East grabbed Washington’s attention. Zelenskyy accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump but Putin refused.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the military launched a “massive” strike with long-range precision weapons on military-industrial facilities in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Khmelnytsk and Sumy regions.
Putin signaled that Russia won’t let up its attacks. He said Tuesday that Ukraine’s May 22 drone attack on a college dormitory in Starobilsk in the Russia-controlled Luhansk region of Ukraine that killed 21 had given the war “a whole new dimension.”
Ukraine said it hit a Russian drone pilot training center in Starobilsk.
(AP)
