At least 12 people killed in one the heaviest Russian air attacks on Ukraine since war started
At least 12 people have been killed after Russian forces launched a huge overnight drone attack across Ukraine, officials said.
Three children – aged 8, 12 and 17 years old – were killed in Zhytomyr , west of Kyiv, four people in the Kyiv region were killed, one in Mykolaiv in the south, and four in the Khmelnytskyi region, according to officials and reports.
The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was a particular focus of the drone strikes. The city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said it was “under attack” but reassured people that the “air defences are operating” as they should.
Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russia attacked the country with 298 drones and 69 missiles overnight, one of the largest aerial attacks since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It said it downed 45 missiles and 266 drones.
Emergency workers extinguish fire in the debris of a house that was destroyed in a Russian strike in Markhalivka, in the Kyiv region. Photograph: Thomas Peter/ReutersIt was “the most massive strike in terms of the number of air attack weapons on the territory of Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022,” Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, told the Associated Press.
Russian air defences, meanwhile, intercepted 110 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 13 over the Moscow and Tver regions, the country’s defence ministry said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
In Moscow, restrictions were imposed on at least four airports, including the main hub Sheremetyevo, the Russian civilian aviation authority said.
As my colleague Peter Beaumont notes in this story, the air raids came as Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds more prisoners Saturday in a continuing major swap that amounted to a rare moment of cooperation amid otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire.
The previous night, Russia launched a large-scale drone and missile attack against Kyiv, injuring at least 15 people, according to officials, in what was one of the heaviest assaults since the start of the Russian invasion.
