Kyiv, June 3:
Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight, killing at least 18 civilians and wounding 131 others, authorities said Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated Moscow’s aerial campaign in recent weeks in an apparent bid to take advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made air defense systems and persuade an increasingly pessimistic audience at home that Moscow is prevailing in the 4-year-old war.
Emergency rescue crews digging through the wreckage of apartment buildings pulled out the bodies of a 3-year-old child as well as those of a woman and her 8-year-old son in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, officials said.
The attack stretched past dawn, with explosions reverberating across cities. Officials said 12 people were killed in Dnipro and six in Kyiv.
Residents of the capital have been on edge for days after Russia warned last week that a massive aerial attack was coming and told foreign diplomats to leave. None appeared to heed the call and no embassies immediately reported damage Tuesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed for more U.S. and European support, describing the massive overnight attack as āan explicit statement by Russia: If Ukraine is not protected from ballistic missiles and other missile strikes, those strikes will continue.ā Putin has stepped up his aerial campaign against Ukraine, with Russian forces recently launching another of their powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missiles.
Ukraine’s shortage of air defense systems, in part because of depleted US stocks from the Iran war, has left civilians especially vulnerable to ballistic missiles, even as Kyiv’s defenses stop most of Moscow’s drones.