Russia hits 6 Ukraine regions in one of largest aerial attacks

Russia bombarded six regions of Ukraine in one of its largest aerial attacks of the three-year war, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.

The nighttime assault lasted for hours and killed three emergency responders in the capital Kyiv as well as another person in a northwestern city, according to authorities.

The barrage included 407 drones and 44 ballistic and cruise missiles, Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said. Ukrainian forces said they shot down about 30 of the cruise missiles and up to 200 of the drones. Some 50 Ukrainian civilians were injured across the country, emergency services said.

The latest Russian attack came hours after US President Donald Trump said it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace.

Trump’s comments were a remarkable detour from his often-stated appeals to stop the war and signaled he may be giving up on recent peace efforts.

Ukrainian cities have come under regular bombardment since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 civilians, according to the United Nations.

“Russia doesn`t change its stripes,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Zelensky, as well as the Ukrainian Interior Ministry and the general prosecutor’s office, said three emergency workers were killed in Kyiv while responding to the Russian strikes. “They were working under fire to help people,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The war has continued unabated even as a US-led diplomatic push for a settlement has brought two rounds of direct peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine.

The negotiations delivered no significant breakthroughs, however, and the sides remain far apart on their terms for an end to the fighting.

Ukraine has offered an unconditional 30-day ceasefire and a meeting between Zelensky and Russian leader Vladimir Putin to break the deadlock. But the Kremlin has effectively rejected a truce and hasn’t budged from its demands.

“The Kremlin continues efforts to falsely portray Russia as willing to engage in good-faith negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, despite Russia’s repeated refusal to offer any concessions,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said late on Thursday.

Putin said in a phone call with Trump earlier this week that he would respond to Ukraine’s daring long-range attack on Russian air bases on Sunday.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed it had aimed at Ukrainian military targets with “long-range precision weapons” and successfully struck arms depots, drone factories and repair facilities, among other targets.

Putin, who denounced the Ukrainian government as “terrorist” after the weekend attacks on Russian air bases and railway bombings that Moscow blamed on Ukraine, promised a response to the air base assault.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that “all that is being done by our military daily is a response to the actions by” Ukraine.

Friday’s barrage fits into a pattern of Russian attacks throughout the war.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the attacks demonstrated key differences between Russia and Ukraine.

“The difference ... is that Ukraine hits legitimate military targets-such as aircraft equipped to bomb our children. Russia targets residential areas, civilians, and critical infrastructure,” Sybiha wrote on X. “Putting Ukraine and Russia on equal footing is unacceptable.”

In Russia, air defences shot down 10 Ukrainian drones heading toward the capital early on Friday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Flights at Moscow airports were temporarily suspended during the night as a precaution.

Ukrainian drones also targeted three other regions of Russia, authorities said, damaging apartment buildings and industrial plants. Three people were injured, officials said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that air defences downed 174 Ukrainian drones over 13 regions early on Friday. It added that three Ukrainian Neptune missiles were also shot down over the Black Sea.

Ukraine struck airfields and other military targets in Russia, such as fuel storage tanks and transport hubs, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

Associated Press