Ukrainian cities are counting casualties after Russia’s latest nationwide barrage, with President Volodymyr Zelensky confirming 22 people dead, including two children, and 130 injured on Tuesday.
Overnight, Russian forces fired more than 70 missiles – many of them ballistic – and around 656 drones. The attack continued throughout the day, with nearly 100 more drone strikes. Fifty-four drones and 33 missiles penetrated Ukraine’s multi-layered air defense system, the air force said.
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Journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens wail before a series of loud explosions that lasted through the night into early Tuesday, sending residents with bags and blankets rushing to shelter in crowded metro stations.
City officials said tens of thousands of people took refuge underground as explosions shattered windows and shook residential blocks across Kyiv.
According to AFP, Anastasia, whose residential building was damaged in the attack, said she spent a “loud” and “terrifying” night huddled in her bathroom, with all of the windows blown out completely.
“Once again, Putin and his madness have ‘claimed victory’ over the lives of ordinary children, residential buildings, and a clinic in Kyiv,” Zelensky said in his latest Telegram post, adding there were hits that could not be intercepted due to the current level of Ukrainian’s air defense supplies.
Zelensky said hundreds of people in Kyiv, Dnipro and other cities spent the day putting out fires, treating the wounded and pulling remaining survivors from under the rubble.
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“I am grateful to everyone who is helping to save lives after the Russian attacks. It was a brutal strike” he said.
A Zircon missile had, according to Zelensky, struck seven buildings at once, while Shahed drones hit high-rise residential buildings in Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Poltava regions. A clinic and a car dealership with Chinese-made cars were also hit by Shahed drones in Kyiv. Further strikes were recorded in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson and Khmelnytskyi regions.
In Odesa, authorities said a maternity hospital with newborns and women in labor were also damaged in the strikes, although no casualties were reported.
In Kharkiv, officials reported at least 15 people wounded, including a child, in strikes on residential areas and industrial sites near the Russian border.
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None of the drones or missiles Russia used in the attack could have been produced without components sourced abroad.
“This means that in every such strike there is – perhaps not always conscious, but still real – complicity of those who work for Russia, who supply Russia with money, who help it bypass sanctions,” he wrote.
Zelensky backed this claim with detailed figures – saying, five Kalibr missiles contain 145 imported components, while 33 Iskander missiles contain 1,122 foreign parts. Six hundred fifty drones of various types rely on more than 17,000 components, without which they could not be produced.
“These are large-scale schemes designed to bypass sanctions. And this is absolutely real complicity in the killings,” he added.
Despite the scale of the strike campaign, independent assessments note that Russian forces have struggled to make meaningful gains on the ground in recent months, with Ukraine in some weeks regaining more territory than it has lost, even as its cities come under repeated attack.
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