Russian daytime barrage of 800 drones kills six in Ukraine
"Since midnight, at least 800 Russian drones have already been launched," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media, adding that "six people have been killed" and dozens were hurt, among them children.
Russia unleashed a sweeping daytime drone assault focused largely on western Ukraine, killing at least six people and injuring dozens more, according to the Ukrainian president, in what looked like a notable shift in Moscow’s long-running air attack pattern.
For more than four years, Russian forces have hammered cities across Ukraine, though major drone and missile barrages have typically come under cover of darkness rather than in broad daylight.
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“Since midnight, at least 800 Russian drones have already been launched,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media, adding that “six people have been killed” and dozens were hurt, among them children.
AFP journalists in Kyiv saw people taking cover in metro stations as air raid sirens sounded across the capital, where the city’s mayor said air defence systems were responding to incoming drones.
“It certainly cannot be called a coincidence that one of the longest massive Russian attacks against Ukraine takes place precisely at the time when the President of the United States arrived for a visit to China,” he wrote.
“In this difficult geopolitical moment, Russia is clearly trying to disrupt the overall political atmosphere and draw attention to its evil – seeking to do so at the expense of Ukrainian lives and Ukrainian infrastructure.”
Earlier in the day, he called on Mr Trump to raise the issue of ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
“We are in constant contact with our American partners,” Mr Zelensky told a summit in Romania.
“We are thankful, and we are expecting that the issue of ending of the Russian war against Ukraine will be raised now as well, while the president of the United States is in China,” he added.
Officials in the western Rivne region said drone strikes killed three people and wounded four others, while also damaging civilian infrastructure and a residential building.
Authorities reported one death in the Zaporizhzhia region and two more in the southern Kherson region.
At least eight others were reported wounded in the Black Sea region of Odesa and in the central regions of Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy.
Earlier, Kyiv’s military intelligence said Russian forces had begun a “prolonged air strike against critical facilities in Ukraine”.
Russian officials, meanwhile, said Ukrainian attacks killed two people in the border Bryansk region.
Local authorities said a drone strike killed one man in the border village of Stara Pogoshch.
Officials said another man died in an attack on the grounds of a post office in the town of Sevsk.
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