Why Russia Says Its Latest Attacks on Ukraine Were a Response to Recent Incidents
KYIV — Russia launched a massive wave of long-range attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight Thursday, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more, according to Ukrainian officials.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it struck military and energy facilities around Kyiv, as well as military airports in several regions, in retaliation for Ukraine’s attack on civilian infrastructure. Drones and missiles hit residential buildings and started a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard in Kyiv.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said eight people had been killed and about three dozen locations across the city were damaged. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko separately reported 34 injured, adding that the first to sixth floors of an apartment building collapsed after a direct hit. He also said paramedics and drivers at an ambulance station were among the wounded.
“The fire at the top of a building on Shevchenko Boulevard burned out of control,” while elsewhere in the city, windows were blown out and cars destroyed. Multiple explosions were heard, a Reuters witness said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky cut short his visit to Dublin for the start of Ireland’s six-month term in the rotating presidency of the EU after warning of a possible overnight attack. “Another horrific night for the residents of the city, who were forced to spend it in shelters,” said Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States.
Escalating Exchanges
The assault comes as Ukraine has intensified strikes deeper into Russian territory, triggering a widespread fuel crisis in the world’s third-biggest oil producer and forcing it to import gasoline from as far away as India. Zelensky has proposed talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the more than four-year-old war, but the Kremlin leader has rejected them.
Neighboring Poland briefly scrambled fighter jets as a preventive measure before recalling them, saying no airspace violation was recorded. Finland also issued a temporary aviation restriction zone in the eastern Gulf of Finland before lifting it. In Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, a man was killed and his wife injured after a drone hit their home.
Russia and Ukraine say they do not deliberately target civilians.
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