Russia launches mass missile and drone attack on Kyiv for third night
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Russia has launched a mass drone and missile attack on Kyiv for the third night in four days, following Moscow’s vow to avenge an audacious Ukrainian operation that destroyed Russian strategic bombers at air bases on the ground hundreds of kilometres from the front line.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 315 kamikaze drones, two ballistic missiles and five cruise missiles towards Ukraine, with Kyiv as the main target. All the cruise and ballistic missiles and 220 of the drones were reportedly shot down.
The Ukrainian capital emerged from the night under thick plumes of smoke after dozens of drones had flown into the city over several hours, hitting several residential buildings and industrial areas, according to city officials. At least four people were injured in the attack.
The latest Russian aerial assault also targeted the seaside city of Odesa, in the country’s south. Two people died and nine were injured in that attack, with the drones damaging a maternity ward, residential buildings and a zoo, city officials said.
Russia has stepped up its bombing campaign and such attacks now routinely involve hundreds of kamikaze drones and decoy unmanned aerial vehicles at a time. It launched a record 479 drones and 20 missiles across Ukraine the day before, with the Ukrainian air force claiming to have intercepted the majority of those.
“Russian missile and Shahed strikes drown out the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message published on X.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said earlier that a strike conducted overnight last week had been made in response to Kyiv’s “terrorist acts” committed on June 1 when Ukraine’s security service attacked four Russian airfields in several corners of the country, destroying at least 12 military aircraft.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also told Donald Trump that Moscow would have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields, the US president said on June 4.
“But Russia has done this sort of attack before and without any justification, just because they can do it,” said Pavlo Narozhny, a Ukrainian military analyst.
“They understand we lack sophisticated air defence systems, that we don’t have enough planes, and they want us to run out of all of this,” he added.
Russia’s armed forces probably stockpiled drones and missiles for several weeks in order to be able to launch massive waves of UAVs, analysts said. The Russian drone operators have changed tactics in recent months and are now flying at much higher altitudes, a change that Ukraine’s machine gun-wielding anti-drone teams have struggled to deal with.
“We also see that they now focus on just one or two cities, rather than attacking the entire country at the same time,” Narozhny said. “They’re changing tactics all of the time, doing everything they can to find holes in our defensive system.”
Ukraine has in turn launched aerial attacks on Russia. The military said on Monday it had hit a Russian facility producing antennas for suicide drones in Cheboksary, nearly 1,000km from the Ukrainian border.