Russia launched several waves of missile and drone attacks against scores of Ukrainian districts, killing at least four people, Ukraine’s military said early Tuesday, a day after Moscow unleashed its largest air campaign on its neighbour.
A hotel was “wiped out” in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, killing two people, according to regional officials. Drone assaults on the city of Zaporizhzhia, located east of Kryvyi Rih, claimed two lives.
The Kyiv region’s air defence systems were deployed multiple times overnight to deflect missiles and drones aimed at the Ukrainian capital, according to the region’s military administration on Telegram.
Reuters’ witnesses reported at least three rounds of explosions overnight in Kyiv.
On Monday, Russia launched more than 200 missiles and drones, killing at least seven and damaging energy infrastructure in an attack condemned by US President Joe Biden as “outrageous, opens new tab.”
Analysts at the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War, said in their note late on Monday that Moscow “likely lacks the defense-industrial capacity to sustain such massive strikes at a similar scale with regularity.”
Several Russian military bloggers, such as the pro-war collective under the name of Rybar, called the Moscow attacks an “act of retaliation” for Ukraine’s surprising incursion into Russia’s territory – the first such action since World War Two.
The Kremlin said on Monday there will be a response to Ukraine’s action in Kursk, but three weeks into the incursion, Kyiv claims further advances. Moscow says it keeps pummelling Ukraine troops there – but is still unable to push them out.
The size of the Tuesday attacks and their full impact was not immediately known, but Ukraine’s air force said it recorded the launch of several groups of drones and the take-off from Russian airfields of strategic Tu-85 strategic bombers and MiG-31 supersonic interceptor aircraft.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
The Kremlin denies targeting civilians in the war that President Vladimir Putin launched against Russia’s smaller neighbour with a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The Russian defence ministry said that its strikes on Monday hit “all designated targets” in Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure.
Kryvyi Rih, Kyiv and central and eastern regions of Ukraine were under air raid alerts for most of the night, starting at around 2000 GMT on Monday.
Two civilians may be still under the rubble of the hotel in Kryvyi Rih and five were injured in the attack, Serhiy Lisak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region where Kryvyi Rih is located, said on Telegram.
Six shops, four high-rise buildings and eight cars were also damaged there, he added.
In Zaporizhzhia, two people were killed and four injured overnight, Ivan Fedorov, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on Telegram.
“Such are the consequences of the overnight attack by Shaheds on Zaporizhzhia,” Fedorov said, referring to the Iranian-made kamikaze drones that Kyiv says Russia uses in its attacks.
