By Pavel Polityuk and Anastasiia Malenko
KYIV (Reuters) – Russia launched another prolonged drone attack on Ukraine, killing one person and damaging swathes of Kyiv as well as striking a maternity ward in the southern port of Odesa, regional officials said early on Tuesday.
The overnight strikes followed Russia’s biggest drone assault on Ukraine on Monday – part of stepped-up operations that Moscow said were retaliatory measures for Kyiv’s recent brazen attacks in Russia.
At least four people were hospitalised as a result of the hours-long attacks that hit seven of the city’s 10 districts, city officials said.
“You can’t break Ukrainians with terror,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, said in a Telegram post after the attacks.
Air raid alerts in Kyiv and most Ukrainian regions lasted five hours until around 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), according to military data.
“A difficult night for all of us,” Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military district, said on Telegram. “Throughout the night, the enemy relentlessly terrorized Kyiv with attack drones. They targeted civilian infrastructure and peaceful residents of the city.”
The attack sparked fires in residential and non-residential neighbourhoods and open space areas, city officials said. Reuters’ witnesses heard and saw countless loud explosions shaking the city and lighting the night sky.
Photos and videos posted on Telegram channels showed heavy smoke rising in the darkness in different parts of Kyiv. The scale of the attack was not immediately known.
Moscow has dramatically increased the pace of its attacks on Ukraine following Kyiv’s strikes on strategic bombers at air bases inside Russia on June 1. Moscow also blamed Kyiv for bridge explosions on the same day that killed seven and injured scores.
The attacks come despite pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump on both sides to move towards a resolution on the war. Moscow and Kyiv returned to negotiations for the first time in more than three years, but outside an agreement on the exchange of war prisoners, there has been no tangible progress.
In addition to swarms of drones and missiles launched in recent days, Russia has also been advancing further on the ground along the frontline in eastern Ukraine, claiming on Tuesday to take more territory there.
In the southern port of Odesa, a “massive” overnight drone attack targeted an emergency medical building and a maternity ward, as well as residential buildings, Oleh Kiper, governor of the broader Odesa region, said on Telegram.
A 59-year-old man was killed in the attack on a residential area, and four people were injured, but patients and staff were safely evacuated from the maternity hospital, Kiper said.
He posted photos of broken windows in what looked like a medical facility and of damage to the facade of several buildings.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war. But thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
(Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Chris Reese and Saad Sayeed)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.