Russia fired at least 800 drones in a massive daytime attack on Wednesday on about 20 regions of Ukraine, killing at least six people and wounding dozens, including children, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
The prolonged barrage began in midmorning and lasted for hours, hitting the capital of Kyiv, the western city of Lviv near Poland, and the port of Odesa on the Black Sea, among other population centres, he said on the Telegram messaging app.
“Our soldiers are defending Ukraine, but Russia’s obvious goal is to overload air defences,” Zelenskiy said, as the bombardment stretched into the late afternoon. He cautioned that a cruise and ballistic missile attack could follow the drone barrage.
It was “one of the longest, massive Russian attacks against Ukraine”, he said on social media.
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It also rattled neighbours.
Hungarian prime minister Peter Magyar said his new government summoned the Russian ambassador over a drone attack near Hungary’s border, in a significant shift from his predecessor Viktor Orban’s friendly relations with Moscow.
“The Hungarian government strongly condemns the Russian attack on Transcarpathia,” Magyar told journalists, adding that foreign minister Anita Orban will speak with the ambassador on Thursday morning.
The foreign minister will ask “when Russia and [Russian president] Vladimir Putin plan to finally end this bloody war”, Magyar added.
“Thank you for your compassion and strong position!” Zelenskiy said on X after Magyar’s comments.
Moscow’s attacks are unrelenting, even as Ukraine is emboldened by its recent military accomplishments and as US president Donald Trump and Putin said – without providing evidence – that the four-year war could be approaching an end.
On Tuesday, Zelenskiy said, 14 Ukrainian regions came under attack, followed by overnight strikes on Ukraine’s residential, energy and railway infrastructure.
“Russia continues its strikes and is doing so brazenly – deliberately targeting our railway infrastructure and civilian sites in our cities,” he said in a post on X.
The overnight strikes targeted Ukraine’s residential and railway infrastructure in the central Dnipro and northeastern Kharkiv regions, port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region, and energy facilities in the central Poltava region, according to Zelenskiy.
“It is important to support Ukraine and not remain silent about Russia’s war. Every time the war disappears from the top of the news, it encourages Russia to become even more savage,” Zelenskiy said, in an apparent reference to world attention being gripped by the Iran war.
Trump said on Tuesday said he believes Moscow and Kyiv will soon reach a deal to end fighting.
“The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing.
“Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.”
Putin said in a speech last weekend that his invasion of Ukraine is possibly “coming to an end”.
Neither leader elaborated on what persuaded them about the possibility of peace in Europe’s longest conflict since the second World War.
US-led diplomatic efforts over the past year to end the war have fizzled after making no progress on key issues, such as whether Russia gets to keep Ukrainian land and what can be done to deter Russia from invading again.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated on Wednesday that Moscow’s fundamental terms are unchanged, with Putin insisting that Ukraine pull its troops from the four regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but has not fully captured.
Zelenskiy vowed to keep pressure on Moscow to make concessions in talks.
“We’re not giving up on diplomatic efforts, and we hope that pressure on Russia, together with negotiations in different formats, will help bring peace,” he said in a speech on Wednesday in Bucharest, Romania, to representatives of countries on Nato’s eastern flank.
“Sanctions are working, our long-range [drone and missile] capabilities are working, and every form of pressure is working,” he said.
Meanwhile, European governments are assessing the merits of opening talks with Putin.
Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile attacks have disrupted energy facilities and manufacturing deep inside Russia, with three Russian regions reporting strikes on Wednesday.
The Russian defence ministry said its air defences intercepted and destroyed 286 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, the illegally annexed Crimea peninsula, the Azov Sea and the Black Sea. – AP
