In a dramatic escalation of hostilities, Russia carried out its most massive aerial offensive since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian officials reported Sunday. The attack, involving a staggering 537 aerial weapons including 477 drones and decoys along with 60 missiles, targeted multiple regions across Ukraine – with strikes reaching western areas far from the front lines.
This development further dims prospects for peace negotiations in the nearly three-year-old conflict.
Ukrainian defenses intercepted 249 of the projectiles while 226 others were lost, likely due to electronic jamming. Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat described this as “the largest combined drone and missile assault since the war began” in comments to the Associated Press.
The attacks left at least 10 dead across several regions, including three killed in separate drone strikes in Kherson, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
The human toll continued to mount with one civilian killed in an airstrike in Kostyantynivka, another man dying from Russian shelling in Kherson city, and a 70-year-old woman’s body recovered from rubble in Zaporizhzhia after artillery fire. The western city of Drohobych in Lviv region suffered a major industrial fire and power outages following a drone strike.
In a significant loss for Ukraine’s air capabilities, an F-16 pilot died when his Western-supplied jet crashed after sustaining combat damage.
On the ground, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed strategic gains, announcing control of Novoukrainka village in the fiercely contested Donetsk region while reporting they had shot down three Ukrainian drones overnight. The Bryansk region in western Russia saw two civilians injured and seven drones downed in what local officials described as Ukrainian attacks.
The military escalation came just days after President Vladimir Putin expressed readiness for new peace talks in Istanbul, though previous rounds in the Turkish city failed to yield progress.
In a related strategic development, Ukraine formally withdrew from the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines, with lawmaker Roman Kostenko justifying the move by stating “Russia, which is not a signatory, uses these indiscriminately against our troops and civilians.”
The international response included Poland and allied nations scrambling fighter jets to secure their airspace during the onslaught. As the conflict approaches its third year with no diplomatic breakthrough in sight, Sunday’s unprecedented aerial assault marks a dangerous new phase in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.