Russia on Friday launched a massive air attack over Ukraine, killing at least 30 people and wounding scores across the country in the fiercest assault since the first days of the war nearly two years ago.
Schools, a maternity hospital, shopping arcades and blocks of flats were among the buildings hit in the barrage, Ukrainian officials said.
The attacks — during which a Russian missile passed through Polish airspace — triggered international condemnation and fresh promises of military support to Ukraine, which has been fighting off invading Russian troops since late February last year.
Photo: Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk region / handout via Reuters
“Today Russia hit us with almost everything it has in its arsenal,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Ukraine’s military said that Russia had launched 158 missiles and drones on Ukraine and 114 of them had been destroyed.
Ukrainian Air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said that this was a “record number” of missiles and “the most massive missile attack” of the war, excluding the early days of constant bombardment.
Russia tried to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses across most major cities, launching a wave of Shahed attack drones followed by missiles of numerous types fired from planes and from Russian-controlled territory.
“As of now, 30 people have been killed and more than 160 wounded as a result of Russia’s massive attack on Ukrainian territory in the morning,” Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Igor Klymenko announced on Telegram.
Russian authorities late on Friday said a strike on a residential building in Belgorod, 80km north of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, had killed one person and wounded four.
Thirteen missiles were intercepted over the Belgorod region, while 32 drones were downed overnight in the Bryansk, Kursk and Oryol regions north of the border and in the Moscow region, the Russian Ministry of Defense said.
Russia’s army said it had “carried out 50 group strikes and one massive strike” on military facilities in Ukraine over the past week, adding that “all targets were hit.”
The UN condemned the attacks and said they must stop “immediately.”
“Regrettably, today’s appalling assaults were only the latest in a series of escalating attacks by the Russian Federation,” said Mohamed Khiari, UN Assistant Secretary General for the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific in the departments of political and peacebuilding affairs and peace operations.
“Everything indicates that a Russian missile entered Polish airspace... It also left,” Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Wieslaw Kukula said.
After speaking to Polish President Andrzej Duda, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance “stands in solidarity” with Poland, adding that “NATO remains vigilant.”
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