At least 5 dead in large-scale nighttime Russian strike on Ukraine

At least five civilians died after Russia launched drones, missiles and guided aerial bombs at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, in a major nighttime attack that officials there said targeted civilian infrastructure.

Moscow sent over 50 ballistic missiles and around 500 drones into nine regions across Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday morning.

Four people, including a 15-year-old, died in a combined drone and missile strike on Lviv, according to regional officials and Ukraine’s emergency service. The historic western city is often seen as a haven from the fighting and destruction further east. At least six more people sustained injuries, according to a statement by Ukraine’s police force.

The strike left two districts without power and public transport suspended for a few hours early Sunday, mayor Andriy Sadovyi reported. He added that a business complex on the outskirts of Lviv was on fire following the strike, describing it as a civilian facility not linked to Ukraine’s war effort.

One person was also injured in the Ivano-Frankivsk region south of Lviv, according to local Gov. Svitlana Onyshchuk.

In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a nighttime aerial assault killed a civilian woman and wounded nine other people including a 16-year-old girl, regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov reported. He said Russia attacked with drones and guided aerial bombs.

Fedorov said the strike destroyed residential buildings and left some 73,000 households in Zaporizhzhia and surrounding areas without power.

Separately, six people including a child were injured in Sloviansk, a key city in the eastern Donetsk region that remains under Ukrainian control, after a Russian guided aerial bomb slammed into an apartment block, regional prosecutors reported on Sunday. They said Russian airstrikes on Saturday evening damaged over two dozen residential buildings in Sloviansk, as well as cars, shops and a cafe.

Zelenskyy on Sunday reiterated his call on Kyiv’s Western partners to send additional air defenses to combat Russia’s “aerial terror.”

“Today, the Russians again targeted our infrastructure, everything that ensures people can live a normal life. We need more protection, a rapid implementation of all defense agreements, especially on air defense, to make this aerial terror pointless,” he said in a Telegram post.

Ukraine has for months conducted its own long-range strikes on Russia, many of which have targeted Moscow’s oil infrastructure and contributed to persistent fuel shortages.

For its part, the Kremlin has ramped up attacks on Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter, as in previous years since the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Kyiv calls it an attempt to weaponize the cold by denying civilians heat, light and running water.

Moscow has also stepped up airstrikes on Ukraine’s railway network, which is essential for military transport, hitting it almost every day over the past two months. Russian drones on Saturday struck a railway station in the northern city of Shostka, killing one and wounding dozens.