KYIV: Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack, officials said Friday, killing at least four people. For only the second time, it used a new ballistic missile that it says flies at 10 times the speed of sound and is unstoppable by air defences.
The intense barrage and the launching of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile came days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress toward agreeing on how to defend the country from further Moscow aggression if a peace deal is struck to end Russia’s almost 4-year-old invasion.
Months of US-led peace efforts have failed to stop the fighting, however. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has made significant progress on the terms of a possible peace settlement in negotiations with Washington envoys. But Moscow has given no public signal it is willing to budge from its demands.
The attack also coincides with a new chill in relations between Moscow and Washington after Russia condemned the US seizure of an oil tanker in the North Atlantic.