Russia launched its biggest drone attacks of the war on Ukraine on two consecutive nights over the weekend, killing at least a dozen people as hopes for a peace deal fade.
On Sunday night, the Kremlin’s forces fired 355 drones and nine Kh-101 cruise missiles at targets across Ukraine, a Ukrainian air force official said. It was Russia’s heaviest drone bombardment since President Putin ordered tanks into Ukraine in 2022.
A 14-year-old boy was injured in the Black Sea region of Odesa, while residential buildings and industrial facilities were damaged in western Ukraine. There were no immediate reports of fatalities.
A Russian drone strike, top right, above Kyiv
GLEB GARANICH/REUTERS
Cars were set alight in the Odesa region
UKRAINIAN STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE PRESS SERVICE/UPI
The previous record was set only on Saturday night, when 12 people were killed after Russia launched 298 drones and several cruise missiles at targets including Kyiv. That barrage was the biggest since May 18, when more than 270 drones were fired.
Three siblings in the Zhytomyr region west of Kyiv were among the fatalities in Saturday night’s attacks, Mariana Betsa, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, said on X. She identified them as Stanislav, 8, Tamara, 12, and Roman 17. Four people were killed in towns near Kyiv, while an 85-year-old woman in Kupiansk, a frontline town in the Kharkiv region, also died, as did a 77-year-old man in the southern city of Mykolaiv. At three people died in the western region of Khmelnytskyi, hundreds of miles from the front.
Following that attack, Trump said that Putin had gone “absolutely CRAZY!” and warned that he could impose new sanctions on Russia. He did not give details.
Russia has been deploying Iranian-made Shahed drones, as well as domestically produced copies, called Gerans, to try to overpower Ukrainian air defences and make it easier for ballistic and cruise missiles to strike their targets.
Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror”
UKRAINIAN STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE PRESS SERVICE/UPI
UKRAINIAN STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE PRESS SERVICE/UP
Russia’s drones are not only increasing in number, they are also carrying more explosives and are equipped with more advanced technology, including jet engines and satellite equipment made by Elon Musk’s Starlink company, the Kyiv Independent reported. Although Musk says that the company has not sold Starlink terminals to Russia companies, the technology, some of which is imported via third countries, is widely available in Moscow.
In addition, Russia has modernized its Iskander-K ballistic missiles to allow them to change trajectory and lay radar decoys, making it harder for US-supplied Patriot air defence systems to shoot them down, Colonel Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian air force spokesman, said at the weekend.
It is unclear how many missiles for the Patriot system, the only air defence system in Ukraine that is capable of bringing down Russian ballistic missiles, remain in Kyiv’s stockpiles. Trump has approved only one US military assistance package to Ukraine, worth $50 million, since returning to the White House in January.