At least 8 people were killed in Ukraine after Russia attacked several regions
A Russian ballistic missile and drone attack in Ukraine on Thursday night killed at least eight civilians, including children, and injured more than 50, officials said.
The blitz has increased Russia’s almost daily bombing of Ukrainian cities as Moscow apparently looks to exploit Kyiv’s critical lack of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defense.
The massacre has cut through regions across Ukraine, including areas bordering Poland far from the country’s eastern border and where Ukraine is believed to be stockpiling and building weapons against Russia’s more than four-year-old invasion. Its long-range drones and missiles attacked Russia’s oil sector, causing a fuel crisis.
The attack occurred two days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Washington with US President Donald Trump and representatives of American defense companies, as he urged the rapid and larger delivery of Patriot air defense systems as the best way to stop Russian attacks.
The Iran war destroyed a number of American-made interceptors. Trump has promised to give licenses to Ukraine to build its Patriots, but production could take a long time to establish.
“Given the severe shortage of anti-aircraft missiles from our partners, our heroes are doing really amazing things, showing the highest level of technology,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
“This Russian terrorist proved once again that preventing the threat of Russian missiles is a very important task when it comes to saving the lives of our people,” he said.
Deadliest attack in Dnipropetrovsk
Zelenskyy said that at least 10 regions of Ukraine were attacked, many houses, businesses and infrastructure buildings were destroyed.
Russia has launched more than 70 missiles, the majority of which are ballistic, he said, and more than 280 attack drones, more than 260 of which have been intercepted.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it was targeting Ukrainian airports, weapons factories and telecommunications facilities as well as military facilities.
Targets included drone manufacturing factories and warehouses, a missile factory, an aircraft repair facility, an electronics manufacturing plant, and a chemical plant, it said.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russian attack killed six people and wounded 10, said Oleksandr Hanzha, the head of the military administration in the region.
Children were among the dead, he told Telegram – a six-year-old girl and boys aged 11 and 17 in the Kryvyi Rih region, Zelenskyy’s hometown.
The children’s parents died in the same incident, but two other children were pulled out alive from under the rubble, Zelenskyy said.
In Kyiv, Russian troops hit the capital with rockets, killing a 31-year-old man and wounding two others, the national police news agency said.
A cruise missile attack hit a city west of Lviv, injuring 34 people, including three children aged six, 13 and 15 years old, according to Maksim Kozytskyi, head of military administration in the Lviv region. Emergency crews were still searching through the debris.
In the Poltava region, a drone crashed into a company warehouse, killing one person, regional military chief Vitalii Diakivnych said.
Russian troops also dropped three powerful bombs on an industrial area south of the city of Kherson on Thursday morning, killing a 56-year-old man, local officials said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defense planes shot down 258 Ukrainian planes overnight.
A depot of online retailer Wildberries has been set on fire in the Russian suburb of Penza, southeast of Moscow, in the latest strike at the company’s warehouses, Penza Gov. Oleg Melnichenko.
Ukraine has been raiding the warehouses of the retail giant Wildberries in Russia. Drone strikes have killed night workers and destroyed the property of many vendors. Here are the facts about Wildberries – and why Ukraine targets these areas.
One person was injured and 200 workers fled the area, he said.
Russian online news agency Astra reported that another Wildberries depot in the Perm region of the Urals was also set on fire by a Ukrainian drone strike.
Ukraine accuses Wildberries of supplying goods that could be used by the Russian military.
Poland investigates airspace incursion
NATO member Poland, meanwhile, was looking into reports from Ukraine that a Russian cruise missile had entered its territory. A Russian Kh-101 missile fell into Poland overnight, violating NATO airspace, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told X.
Sybiha clearly called that strengthening the air defense of Ukraine is urgent and serves as a guarantee of the wider protection of Europe.
An unidentified object flying west in the middle of the night was tracked in Polish airspace and an F-16 fighter jet was launched to identify and intercept it, said the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces on X.
The object disappeared from radar screens before it was identified, the command said. The helicopter flew to its last known location, where crews found a possible impact site in an agricultural area in Lublin province, the command said.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who recently met with Zelenskyy, traveled to the area on Thursday morning to inspect the sites.
