KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia has launched its second major drone and missile bombardment of Ukraine in four days, officials said Tuesday, again targeting the power grid and apparently snubbing U.S.-led peace efforts as the war approaches the four-year mark.
Russia fired nearly 300 drones, 18 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles in eight regions overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media.
One strike in the northeastern Kharkiv region killed four people at a postal depot, and several hundred thousand families were without power in the Kyiv region, Zelenskyy said. The daytime temperature in the capital was -12 C (about 10 F). The streets were covered in snow, and the city rumbled with the noise from the generators.
Four days earlier, Russia also sent hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale attack overnight and, for only the second time in the war, used a powerful new hypersonic missile to strike western Ukraine in what appeared to be a clear warning to Kiev’s NATO allies that it would not back down.
On Monday, the United States accused Russia of a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation” of the fighting, when the Trump administration is trying to advance peace negotiations.
Tammy Bruce, the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that Washington deplores the “shocking number of victims” in the conflict and condemns Russia’s intensifying attacks on energy and other infrastructure.
Russia sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat and running water in the freezing winter months during the war, hoping to wear down public resistance to the full-scale invasion of Moscow, which began on February 24, 2022. Ukrainian officials describe the strategy as “armed winter.”
In Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the Russian attack also injured 10 people, local authorities said.
In the southern city of Odesa, six people were wounded in the attack, said Oleh Kiper, the head of the regional military administration. The attacks damaged power infrastructure, a hospital, a kindergarten, an educational facility and a number of residential buildings, he said.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine is counting on faster deliveries of air defense systems agreed by the United States and Europe, as well as new aid pledges, to counter Russia’s latest attack.
Meanwhile, Russian air defenses shot down 11 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. Seven were reportedly destroyed over Russia’s Rostov region, where Governor Yuri Slyusar confirmed an attack on the coastal town of Taganrog, about 40 kilometers (about 24 miles) east of the Ukrainian border, in the latest in Kyiv’s long-running assault on Russian war-related facilities.
Ukraine’s military said domestically produced drones struck a drone manufacturing facility in Taganrog. The Atlant Aero plant carries out design, manufacture and testing of Molniya drones and components for Orion unmanned aerial vehicles, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Explosions and fire were reported at the site, with damage to the production building confirmed, the General Staff said.
It was not possible to independently verify the reports.
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Katie Marie Davies contributed to this report from Manchester, England.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine