At least 16 people have been killed and dozens wounded in Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine, according to the country’s national police.
The attack came overnight on Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to arrive in Turkiye, where he hopes to revive talks over ending the war caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago.
“Every brazen attack against ordinary life shows that the pressure on Russia is insufficient. Effective sanctions and assistance to Ukraine can change this,” the president said in a social media post on Wednesday, calling for air defence missile aid from allies.
Russia used more than 470 drones and 48 missiles in the attack on Ukraine, Zelenskyy added.
On Wednesday morning, the whole of Ukraine was under an air raid alert, with authorities issuing warnings to residents as explosions rocked the western cities of Lviv and Ternopil.
In Ternopil, at least 16 people were killed and 64 others, including 14 children, were injured, a statement by the national police said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said Russian attacks had resulted in emergency power outages in a number of regions.
The full extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
Ukrainian state media reported that a multistorey residential building had been hit in Ternopil, while a witness told the Reuters news agency that there had been power disruptions in Lviv during the attack.
Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on Telegram that the attack damaged an energy facility and hit an industrial site in the Lviv region but caused no casualties, without providing further details.
Images shared on Ukrainian news-monitoring Telegram channels showed a tower block in Ternopil with its upper floors torn away beneath a towering column of black smoke, an orange glow of fire still burning through the haze.
In the northeastern region of Kharkiv, police said that the overnight attack, which injured at least 36 people, damaged more than 10 apartment buildings, a school, a supermarket and an ambulance substation, among other buildings.
Ukraine fires US-made missiles
Moscow has been intensifying its daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and hitting a number of civilian sites.
Zelenskyy, who has been completing a short tour to visit Kyiv’s strongest European allies, including Turkiye, hopes to acquire additional air defences to counter these attacks.
On Monday, he signed an accord in France with President Emmanuel Macron that provides for Kyiv to acquire up to 100 fighter jets and other hardware, including drones.
Following Russia’s latest strikes, neighbouring Poland briefly closed its Rzeszow and Lublin airports in the southeast of the country, according to the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency.
Polish military commanders said earlier that Polish and allied aircraft were scrambled due to Russian attacks on facilities located in Ukraine.
Poland and its allies have been reinforcing air defences amid increasing Russian drone activity. Last month, Warsaw deployed additional systems along its border with Ukraine, which stretches for about 530km (330 miles).
Ukraine’s alleged attacks on Russia
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces fired on Wednesday four United States-made ATACMS missiles in Russia’s southern city of Voronezh in an attempted strike on civilian targets, according to Russia’s defence ministry.
“Russian S-400 air defence crews and Pantsir missile and gun systems shot down all ATACMS missiles,” Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram.
Falling debris from the destroyed missiles damaged the roofs of a Voronezh retirement home and an orphanage, as well as one house, the ministry said, adding that there were no casualties or injuries among civilians.
The ministry published pictures of pieces of the missiles and said that air reconnaissance forces identified the Kharkiv region as the location of the ATACMS launch.
Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday it had attacked military targets in Russia with the US-supplied missiles, calling it a “significant development”.
Kyiv received the systems in 2023 but was initially restricted to using them only on its own territories, nearly a fifth of which are controlled by Russia.
Ukraine previously attacked Russian territories with the ATACMS missiles in January, firing six missiles on Russia’s Belgorod region.
