At least five people were killed across Ukraine on Tuesday when heavy Russian airstrikes targeted the country for a second consecutive day.
Russia reportedly launched 127 missiles and cruise missiles, along with over 100 combat drones. This was the highest number reported by the Ukrainian military in two and a half years of conflict.
The missile and drone attacks targeted scores of Ukrainian regions, the military said early Tuesday, a day after Moscow’s biggest air attack of the war on its neighbor.
Two people were killed when a hotel was “wiped out” in the central Ukraine city of Kryvyi Rih, regional officials said. Two died in drone attacks on the city of Zaporizhzhia, east of Kryvyi Rih.
Kyiv region’s air defense systems were deployed several times overnight to repel missiles and drones targeting the Ukrainian capital, the region’s military administration said on Telegram.
Reuters’ witnesses reported at least three rounds of explosions overnight in Kyiv.
Earlier Monday, Russia launched more than 200 missiles and drones, killing at least seven and damaging energy infrastructure in an attack condemned by U.S. President Joe Biden as “outrageous.”
Analysts at the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War, said in their note late Monday that Moscow “likely lacks the defense-industrial capacity to sustain such massive strikes at a similar scale with regularity.”
Several Russian military bloggers, such as the pro-war collective under the name of Rybar, called the Moscow attacks an “act of retaliation” for Ukraine’s surprising incursion into Russia’s territory – the first such action since World War II.
‘Kursk retaliation’
The Kremlin said Monday there will be a response to Ukraine’s action in Kursk, but three weeks into the incursion, Kyiv claims further advances. Moscow says it keeps pummelling Ukraine troops there – but is still unable to push them out.
The size of the Tuesday attacks and their full impact was not immediately known but Ukraine’s air force said it recorded the launch of several groups of drones and the take-off from Russian airfields of strategic Tu-85 strategic bombers and MiG-31 supersonic interceptor aircraft.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
The Kremlin denies targeting civilians in the war that President Vladimir Putin launched against Russia’s smaller neighbor with a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that its strikes Monday hit “all designated targets” in Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure.
Kryvyi Rih, Kyiv and central and eastern regions of Ukraine were under air raid alerts for most of the night, starting at around 8 p.m. GMT on Monday.
Two civilians may be still under the rubble of the hotel in Kryvyi Rih and five were injured in the attack, Serhiy Lisak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region where Kryvyi Rih is located, said on Telegram.
Six shops, four high-rise buildings and eight cars were also damaged there, he added.
In Zaporizhzhia, two people were killed and four injured overnight, Ivan Fedorov, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on Telegram.
“Such are the consequences of the overnight attack by Shaheds on Zaporizhzhia,” Fedorov said, referring to the Iranian-made kamikaze drones that Kyiv says Russia uses in its attacks.
