Russia launched a series of missile and drone attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions, resulting in at least six deaths, according to officials on Tuesday. This follows Russia’s largest air assault on Ukraine since the war began.
In the central city of Kryvyi Rih, a missile strike destroyed a hotel, killing three people. Five others were injured, and one person remains missing, said Serhiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region which includes Kryvyi Rih, on Telegram.
In the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, drone attacks killed three people. Additionally, three people were injured in the Zaporizhzhia region, and four others were hurt in a missile strike on the northeastern Kharkiv region overnight, according to local authorities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Tuesday that Ukraine will respond to Russia’s attacks. He called on international allies to consider joint air defense efforts and provide long-range weaponry, following Russia’s assault on Ukrainian energy infrastructure with over 200 missiles and drones on Monday.
During the latest attack, Ukraine’s air force managed to intercept five out of ten incoming missiles and 60 out of 81 drones. However, ten more drones went undetected and may have landed within Ukrainian territory, with one crossing into Belarus.
The Russian defense ministry claimed that its forces executed a high-precision strike on Ukraine overnight, according to the Interfax news agency. Moscow has denied targeting civilians since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, despite thousands of civilian casualties.
Russian military bloggers have suggested that the attacks were retaliation for Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, which is the first of its kind since World War II.
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In Kyiv, local military officials reported that all incoming threats aimed at the city were successfully intercepted by air defenses. There were no casualties reported, though two small fires caused by debris were extinguished by emergency services.
