Russian drone attack on Ukraine kills at least 18

Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight, killing at least 18 civilians and wounding more than 100 others, authorities said on Tuesday.

The damage trapped some people under the rubble of apartment buildings. Emergency crews digging through the wreckage pulled out the body of a three-year-old child and the bodies of a mother and her eight-year-old son in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, officials said. The attack stretched from night into day and the boom of explosions reverberated across cities.

Kyiv residents had been on edge for days after Russia warned that a massive aerial attack was coming and warned foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital. None appeared to heed the call.

“A large-scale attack and an explicit statement by Russia: If Ukraine is not protected from ballistic missiles and other missile strikes, those strikes will continue,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in response to the attack, urging more support from the US and European countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up Moscow’s aerial campaign against Ukraine, with Russian forces recently launching a powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile for only the third time in the four-year war.

The Russian strategy seeks to take advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of US-made Patriot air defence missiles, with international stocks depleted by the Iran war. That has left civilians especially vulnerable to the Russian ballistic missile barrages, even as air defenses stop most of the attack drones. At least 64 people were wounded in the Capital, emergency services said.

Kyiv resident Iryna Salikova, 37, spent the night lying in a bath tub for protection with her 3-year-old daughter, as blasts reverberated across the city. “Our window was broken, a cobblestone flew into the children’s room,” Salikova said, though they weren’t hurt. “Thank God we’re alive. Today we’re alive, today we’re lucky.”

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 defence forces destroyed or suppressed 40 missiles and 602 drones.

Putin is keen to generate some positive news from the conflict that began with Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbour 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.

US-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 US President Donald Trump but Putin refused.

Russia’s Defence 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, and Khmelnytsk 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.

Hits of 30 ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles and 33 drones were recorded at at least 38 locations across Ukraine, according to regional authorities. Debris from destroyed drones fell on 15 locations, the air force 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.

Olena Dniprovska, 65, and her husband Yevhen, 64, were wounded 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.

In Kharkiv, at least 14 people were wounded and residential homes, garages and cars were damaged. People were also trapped beneath the rubble of a four-story apartment block.