Kyiv: Russia attacked two Ukrainian cities with waves of drones and missiles early Tuesday, killing three people and wounding at least 13 in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called “one of the biggest” strikes in the 3-year-old war.
The attack struck Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa. In an online statement, Zelenskyy said that Moscow’s forces fired over 315 drones, most of them Shaheds, and seven missiles overnight.
“Russian missile and Shahed strikes are louder than the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace,” Zelenskyy wrote, urging “concrete action” from the US and Europe in response to the attack.
A maternity hospital and residential buildings in the southern port of Odesa were damaged in the attack, regional head Oleh Kiper said. Two people were killed and nine injured, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
Another person was killed in Kyiv’s Obolonskyi district, regional head Tymur Tkachenko wrote on Telegram.
“Russian strikes are once again hitting not military targets but the lives of ordinary people. This once again shows the true nature of what we are dealing with,” he said.
Explosions and the buzzing of drones were heard around the city for hours.
The fresh attacks came a day after Moscow launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine in the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the war.
Ukrainian and Western officials have been anticipating Moscow’s
response to Kyiv’s audacious June 1 drone attack on distant Russian air bases.
Russia has been launching a record number of drones and missiles in recent days, despite both sides trading memoranda at direct peace talks in Istanbul on June 2 that set out conditions for a
potential ceasefire.