Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tueday said an Indian national was among those killed in the latest overnight Russian attacks, adding a new dimension to the strikes just a day after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek.
Russia launched a large aerial attack in and around Ukraine’s capital overnight into Tuesday morning, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than a dozen others, including three children, local authorities said.
Zelenskyy said the death underscored the human cost of Russia's war in Ukraine and called for the violence to end. Modi, during his meeting with Putin on Monday, had said there was no solution to the Ukraine conflict on the battlefield and that the war must end "for humanity's sake", according to a readout of the meeting.
Ukraine’s air force said that Russia began the attack at 6 pm on Monday (1500 GMT), using ballistic, cruise and anti-radar missiles, as well as 218 drones and decoys. About a third of the drones were reportedly jet-powered.
The main targets were the Kiev and Odessa regions, the air force said in a statement on Telegram.
The overnight strikes marked the sixth consecutive day of Russian attacks on Kiev, following a stretch of air raid alerts that began last week.
The latest attack struck civilian infrastructure and residential buildings in several districts of Kiev, with eight people killed in the city itself and three others in the surrounding region.
The death toll
The Russian strikes killed seven people in the Darnytskyy district of the capital, authorities said. One person was seriously wounded and hospitalised, the emergency service said. At another site in the district, an explosion wounded two people, including a child.
An eighth person was killed in the Holosiivskyy district, when a nonresidential building was hit and caught fire, the emergency service said in a statement. In the Solomianskyy district, a drone strike hit a residential building, causing damage. Emergency workers rescued a man and freed a woman trapped beneath the rubble.
The other three people who died were in areas of the Kiev region outside the city, and 12 were wounded. In Boryspil, three cars caught fire.
Emergency crews evacuated 48 people and rescued two from under the rubble. Eight people were injured, including two children. Also in Boryspil, a truck caught fire at an infrastructure facility, damaging the building. Two people were killed and three others injured, the emergency service said. A service station in Boryspil was also damaged, killing one person.
The Odessa region came under a major Russian attack overnight, damaging civilian infrastructure and wounding one person, regional head Oleh Kiper said.
Two residential buildings were damaged, while a fire broke out at a sewing factory. Russian forces also struck the Orlivka international ferry crossing on the border with Romania, he said.
Ukrainian forces said they destroyed or suppressed 199 aerial targets, including five ballistic missiles and 187 drones. Missile and drone strikes were recorded at 28 locations, while debris from intercepted targets fell at another 10 sites, it said.
Russia says attack targeted military-industrial and fuel and energy facilities
Russia's defence ministry, meanwhile, said its forces had carried out a "massive strike" using long-range weapons and attack drones.
It said the attack targeted military-industrial and fuel and energy facilities in Kiev and the surrounding region.
The ministry also said it had struck infrastructure in the southern Odessa region and the ports of Odessa and Chornomorsk.
Both sides have escalated long-range strikes in recent months, targeting infrastructure such as warehouses, businesses, and oil and port facilities, as well as ships, increasing civilian casualties.
Ukraine faces a shortage of interceptor missiles, particularly US-made Patriot systems used against ballistic threats.
