Russia launched a series of large-scale attacks on Ukraine this week, firing more than 1,000 drones in the last 36 hours, as Moscow launches a new campaign on the battlefield.
Some 392 were launched Monday night into Tuesday, the Ukrainian Air Force said. More than 550 were launched at targets across the country in a rare and deadly daytime assault on Tuesday, the military said. And Russia launched another 147 drones overnight into Wednesday, striking more than a dozen locations, the air force added.
The large-scale attacks come as Russian forces have begun a spring offensive in eastern Ukraine, including the use of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles, the Ukrainian military and analysts told CNN earlier this week. The assault is gathering pace as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned about the consequences of the Middle East conflict for his country.
Tuesday’s drone attacks left at least 40 people in the country injured – including five children, Zelensky said.
At least two people in the western Ukrainian oblast of Ivano-Frankivsk were killed in an attack on a maternity hospital, the region’s governor Svitlana Onyshchuk said. The victims included a National Guard soldier and his 15-year-old daughter, according to Ivano-Frankivsk mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv. They were at the maternity ward visiting the soldier’s wife, who had given birth to a son just days earlier.
Four other people, including a 6-year-old, were injured. And in Vinnytsia, a 59-year-old man was killed while 11 others were injured, according to mayor Serhiy Morgunov.
“This was one of the largest attacks over the course of the day,” with drones directed towards central and western Ukraine, Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ignat said.
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