Russia has launched one of its largest strikes on Kyiv, injuring four people and causing widespread damage across seven of the capital’s ten districts, officials said.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia launched 315 drones overnight across the country.
Further south in the port city of Odesa, two people were killed after drone attacks hit residential buildings and medical facilities, including a maternity ward, officials said. Zelensky later said 13 people had also been injured there.
The overnight attack was “one of the largest strikes on Kyiv”, Zelensky said on social media.
Witnesses said they heard loud explosions across the city, and pictures showed the night sky lit in orange and heavy smoke rising from buildings.
Elsewhere in the country, the Dnipro region and Chernihiv region were also targeted, Zelensky said.
He said two of the seven missiles fired in the overnight strikes were “ballistics of North Korean production.”
Zelensky said “for yet another night, instead of a ceasefire, there were massive strikes”.
Ukraine also launched drone attacks on Russia overnight, causing several airports to close temporarily.
The latest strikes come after massive Russian attacks across Ukraine in the past few days. Moscow said those strikes were in response to Ukraine’s recent attacks inside Russia.
A covert Ukrainian drone strike named “Operation Spider’s Web” struck air bases deep inside Russia on 1 June. Russian leader Vladimir Putin had promised to respond “very strongly” to the attacks in a call with US President Donald Trump, according to the American leader.
During the attack early on Tuesday, air raid alerts were in place across large parts of Ukraine, the country’s official air raid map showed, including in Kyiv and the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions in the east.
State Emergency Service Odesa/ Reuters“Stay in shelters! The massive attack on the capital continues,” Kyiv Mayor Klitschko warned on Telegram.
The head of Kyiv’s military administration Timur Tkachenko said on Telegram that the attacks on various districts happened “simultaneously”.
Debris from “downed targets” fell on several different buildings across the city and fires broke out at a residential building and in warehouses, he added.
The attacks “terrorised” the city and it was “a difficult night for all of us,” the head of Kyiv’s military district, Timur Tkachenko, said.
In Odesa, Governer Kiper said patients and staff managed to evacuate the medical station and maternity ward that were targeted, while ambulances were damaged.
Those that were injured were receiving medical assistance, he added.
This attack follows the start of a prisoner swap on Monday. The swap will see sick and seriously injured prisoners of war, those under the age of 25 and the bodies of 12,000 soldiers returned.
Zelensky said the exchange would unfold “in several stages”, describing it as a “complicated” process with “many sensitive details”.
Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Reuters