Russia launches nearly 1,000 drones at Ukraine in 24 hours, killing at least eight

Russia fired nearly 1,000 drones at Ukraine in 24 hours and unleashed one of its biggest-ever daytime attacks, officials said Tuesday, with President Volodymyr Zelensky calling out Russia's "absolute depravity".

Russia fired 550 drones during the day on Tuesday following 392 overnight, Ukraine's air force said in a statement.

The massive drone attacks killed at least eight people and hit a UNESCO world heritage site in Lviv.

Two people were killed and a maternity hospital was damaged in a drone strike on the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, with another person killed in the central Vinnytsia region in a daytime assault that followed the overnight barrage on residential buildings in several cities that killed another five people.

"This is absolute depravity, and only someone like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could find this appealing," Zelensky said of the attack on the historic western city of Lviv, which is far from the front lines.

"The scale of this attack makes it abundantly clear that Russia has no intention of actually ending this war," Zelensky said in his daily address, vowing Ukraine "will certainly respond to any attacks".

Housing, infrastructure hit

The daytime strikes on the centre of Ivano-Frankivsk killed two people and wounded four, including a 6-year-old child, regional head Svitlana Onyshchuk said on social media. Around 10 residential buildings and a maternity hospital were damaged, she said.

In the Vinnytsia region, one person was killed and 11 wounded, the regional head said.

At least 13 people were hospitalised in Lviv, where an AFP reporter saw a column of flames rising from a building next to the 17th-century St. Andrew's Church and Bernardine Monastery in the city centre, which was struck during evening rush hour.

Firefighters were working to put out the blaze at an apartment building, whose roof had been smashed in and windows blown out.

In Kyiv, AFP reporters saw locals – including a mother with her toddler – sheltering in the metro at lunchtime during a rare midday air alert.

Overnight, Russian missiles and drones rained down on residential areas and transport and energy infrastructure across Ukraine, local authorities said. Five people were killed and dozens wounded in strikes across the central Poltava region, the eastern city of Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.

The nighttime attack also cut a key power line connecting neighbouring Moldova to Europe, forcing the country to declare a state of emergency.

Another power line to the southern Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was also cut, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported.

In Russia, authorities in the western Kursk region said a Ukrainian strike on a farm had killed one person and wounded 13.

Read moreHow Russia’s 'thousand cuts' tactic is straining Ukraine’s frontline forces

A spokesman for Ukraine's air force told AFP it was one of the biggest-ever daytime attacks on Ukraine.

"On such a large scale, it's basically the first time. I don't recall there being such daytime strikes with this number of drones," said spokesman Yuriy Ignat.

Moscow has typically fired its barrages overnight throughout the four-year-long war, which started with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has already killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The attacks came with Ukraine concerned that it could struggle to repel relentless Russian aerial strikes as its supplies of US air defence systems dwindle amid the war in the Middle East.

A third round of US-brokered talks between Moscow and Kyiv aimed at ending Russia's invasion has been derailed by the war in the Middle East.

Ukraine sent a delegation to the United States last weekend in a bid to revive the negotiation process, but the effort yielded no immediate result.

Kyiv has been seeking to trade its anti-drone technology and expertise for conventional air defence missiles, which it urgently needs, and has dispatched around 200 of its military experts to Gulf countries facing Iranian drone attacks.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)