A large Russian drone and missile barrage killed 19 people and injured dozens more in Ukraine overnight, officials said yesterday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrived in Turkey for talks on finding a settlement that might end Russia’s invasion of his country.
The nighttime attack hit two nine-story apartment blocks in Ternopil, in western Ukraine, Ukrainian Minister of the Interior Ihor Klymenko said.
Emergency crews were sifting through the rubble in daylight to find any survivors, he said.
Photo: Reuters
At least 66 people were reported injured, including 16 children.
Russia fired 476 strike and decoy drones, as well as 48 missiles of various types, at Ukrainian targets overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said.
“Every brazen attack against ordinary life indicates that the pressure on Russia [to stop the war] is insufficient,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.
The Ukrainian leader said he would meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later yesterday as part of his efforts to diplomatically isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring more international pressure to bear on him.
“Foremost, we will discuss maximum capabilities to ensure that Ukraine achieves a just peace,” Zelenskiy said of his talks with Erdogan.
“We see some positions and signals from the United States, well, let’s see tomorrow,” he added, without elaborating.
Ternopil, about 200km from the Polish border, sits in a part of relatively peaceful western Ukraine where many people from the east and south moved to as they fled danger along the front line.
Almost 50 people were injured in Russian strikes on three other Ukrainian regions.
Two Eurofighter Typhoon jets and two F-16s were scrambled in Romania when a drone entered the NATO member’s airspace during the Russian attacks, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said.
The Polish military said that Polish and allied aircraft were deployed in the middle of the night as a preventive measure.
Poland’s Rzeszow and Lublin airports were closed temporarily to prioritize military aviation, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency said.
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