TIMES International
Russia fired hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Kyiv and several other Ukrainian cities overnight into Tuesday, killing at least 16 civilians and wounding more than 100 people in one of the heaviest aerial assaults of the war, according to the Associated Press.
The strikes hit the capital Kyiv as well as Dnipro, Poltava, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, damaging apartment buildings and other civilian infrastructure and trapping residents under rubble, Ukrainian authorities said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the United States and European countries to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences following the attacks.
Emergency workers searched through shattered residential buildings for survivors as explosions echoed from night into daytime across multiple cities.
In the central city of Dnipro, rescuers recovered the body of a three-year-old child along with the bodies of a mother and her eight-year-old son from the ruins of an apartment block, officials said.
Kyiv residents had remained tense for days after Russia warned that a major aerial assault was imminent and advised foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital, though none appeared to do so.
“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,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 73 missiles and 656 drones during the assault. Air defence systems destroyed or suppressed 40 missiles and 602 drones.
The main targets included Kyiv, Dnipro and eastern and central regions across the country.
At least four people were killed and 63 injured in Kyiv alone, including three children, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service. Residential buildings and civilian infrastructure were damaged in eight districts of the capital.
In Kharkiv, authorities said at least 14 people were wounded while homes, garages and vehicles were damaged. Residents were also trapped beneath the debris of a four-storey apartment building.
Kyiv resident Iryna Salikova, 37, spent the night sheltering in a bathtub with her three-year-old daughter as explosions shook the city.
“Our window was broken, a cobblestone flew into the children’s room,” Salikova said. “Thank God we’re alive. Today we’re alive, today we’re lucky.”
Olena Dniprovska, 65, and her husband Yevhen, 64, were wounded in their apartment in Kyiv’s Podilskyi district.
“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,” Dniprovska said, with dried blood visible on 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,” she added.
“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.”
Regional authorities said hits from 30 ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles and 33 drones were recorded at least 38 locations across Ukraine. Debris from destroyed drones fell at 15 sites.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has intensified Moscow’s aerial campaign in recent weeks, including the recent deployment of the hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile for only the third time during the more than four-year war.
Western officials and analysts say Moscow is attempting to exploit Ukraine’s shortage of US-made Patriot air defence missiles, with international stockpiles depleted by the war involving Iran.
The shortage has left civilians more vulnerable to Russian ballistic missile attacks, although Ukrainian defences continue intercepting most drones.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said the military carried out a “massive” strike using long-range precision weapons against military-industrial facilities in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions.
Putin also signalled Moscow would continue its attacks.
He said a Ukrainian drone strike on 22 May against a college dormitory in Starobilsk, in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region, which reportedly killed 21 people, had given the war “a whole new dimension”.
Ukraine said it had struck a Russian drone pilot training centre in Starobilsk.
