Russia launched a major daylight attack on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure facilities on Wednesday, despite Donald Trump’s insistence that the war will soon end.
Dozens of drones were trying to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences ahead of expected missile strikes, Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency said.
Air raid sirens sounded over Kyiv at around 11am local time as Ukrainian trackers reported that some 200 unmanned drones were heading south and west from the border with Belarus.
Poland scrambled fighter jets and helicopters as a preventative measure in response, the army said, adding that ground-based air defences had been put on a state of heightened readiness.
Volodymyr Zelensky said that there were “more than a hundred” Russian drones flying over Ukraine early in the morning, warning that more waves were likely to follow.
“Russia continues its strikes and is doing so brazenly – deliberately targeting our railway infrastructure and civilian sites in our cities,” the Ukrainian president said in a post on social media.
“Unfortunately, people were wounded and killed in these strikes; my condolences to all their families and loved ones,” he added, referring to attacks in 14 regions on Tuesday.
Russian attacks in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk hit civilian sites, killing at least six people on Tuesday and ending hopes that a three-day ceasefire that ended on Monday could be extended.
Ukraine’s air force reported today that Russia had hit the country with 139 drones since 6pm on Tuesday, of which 111 were downed or neutralised.
Russia has stepped up daytime attacks against Ukraine in recent weeks in a change in tactics likely to be more disruptive to civilian life.
Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to the defence minister, said Wednesday’s attack showed that Russia was trying to change its tactics of using drones every time.
This time, large numbers of drones were moving along between 5 km and 10 km from the Belarus border, to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence system so that as many as possible could get through to the west of the country, he said.
The western Khmelnytskyi region came under attack, the regional governor said, adding that three people had been wounded.
In the southern city of Kherson, which regularly comes under Russian shelling and drone attacks, six passengers and a driver were wounded in a Russian drone attack on a city bus, a local official said.
According to preliminary information, two people were also wounded in the attack in the southern city of Odesa, the regional governor said.
In Kyiv, drone debris fell on an open territory in the northern Obolon district, the city’s mayor said.
Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians but has killed thousands of them during the war, and says strikes on civil infrastructure are legitimate if they degrade Ukraine’s warfighting capabilities.
Ukraine also resumed drone attacks on Russia’s oil refineries and ports on Wednesday, two days after a three-day ceasefire proposed by President Trump expired.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that 286 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted and destroyed over Russian regions overnight.
Russia and Ukraine traded blows just hours after the US president said he believed the war was “very close” to ending.
“The end of the war in Ukraine I really think it’s getting very close,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to China.
The comments echoed recent comments from Putin that “the matter” of the war “is coming to an end”.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday reiterated Moscow’s longstanding position that a ceasefire could take place and peace talks could start if Ukraine withdraws from the eastern Donbas region, something Kyiv has emphatically rejected.
Peskov also said that Russia was interested in pursuing a range of joint economic projects with the US if Washington stops linking trade ties with a peace deal on Ukraine.
Zelensky cast doubt on Russia’s willingness to end the conflict on Monday, saying: “Russia has no intention of ending this war. And we are, unfortunately, preparing for new attacks.”
