Russia blasts Kyiv with another missile and drone barrage, killing at least 2

  Russia pounded Ukraine’s capital with another major missile and drone attack overnight into Thursday, killing at least two people and causing fires across Kyiv a day after the heaviest drone attack so far in the more than three-year war, Ukrainian officials said.In another tense and sleepless night for Kyiv residents, with many of them dashing in the dark with children, pets and blankets to the protection of subway stations, at least 22 people were wounded, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv Regional Administration.

The night was punctuated with the chilling whine of approaching drones that slammed into residential areas, exploded and sent balls of orange flames into the dark during the 10-hour barrage. Russia fired 397 Shahed and decoy drones as well as cruise and ballistic missiles at Kyiv and five other regions, authorities said."This is a clear escalation of Russian terror: hundreds of Shahed drones every night, constant missile strikes, massive attacks on Ukrainian cities,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post.

June brought the highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said Thursday, as Russia launched 10 times more drones and missiles than the same month last year.At least 13,580 civilians, including 716 children, have been killed and more than 34,000 wounded since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor began on Feb.

 24, 2022, the UN said.Two rounds of direct peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations have yielded no progress on stopping the fighting. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday there is no date for a possible third round of negotiations.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the US and Russia have exchanged new ideas for peace talks after he met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Malaysia on Thursday.Russia has recently sought to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses with major attacks that include increasing numbers of decoy drones.

The previous night, it fired more than 700 attack and decoy drones, topping previous nightly barrages for the third time in two weeks."The continued increase in the size of strike packages is likely intended to support Russian efforts to degrade Ukrainian morale in the face of constant Russian aggression,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said late Wednesday.

In tandem with the bombardments, Russia’s army has started a new drive to break through parts of the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where short-handed Ukrainian forces are under heavy strain at what could prove to be a pivotal period of the war."

At present, the rate of Russian advance is accelerating and Russia’s summer offensive is likely to put the armed forces of Ukraine under intense pressure,” Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at military think tank RUSI, wrote in an assessment published Wednesday.

 Associated Press