At least 15 people in a Russian strike overnight.
(The Post News)- Russia staged a massive night-time aerial bombardment of Ukraine at the start of Tuesday morning, killing at least 15 and injuring nearly 100 other people in one of the deadliest strikes on Kyiv in a few months. Residential houses, schools, and essential infrastructure were some of the dozens of civilian targets hit in the capital city and other places, according to Ukrainian officials.
Air raid sirens ululated almost 10 hours in Kyiv, a relentless assault that began with swarms of drones and grew into a barrage of missiles. At least 440 drones and 32 missiles were fired by Russian forces, declared President Volodymyr Zelensky, who branded the attack “pure terrorism.”.
Among the dead was a 62-year-old U.S. citizen who died of shrapnel wounds in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district. A ballistic missile obliterated part of a nine-storey apartment building there, leveling one of the sections into rubble and prompting a desperate search for survivors.
“Today, Kyiv endured another tough night,” reported Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration. “More casualties, incinerated houses, human suffering and terror. Search and rescue in ruins continue.”
Black thick smoke billowed over the capital at dawn as rescue crews fought their way through collapsed buildings, extracting the injured with cranes. Video posted online showed massive structural collapse and residents in tears while firemen battled fires and medics treated the injured.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this. It is simply awful,” claimed 57-year-old resident Viktoriia Vovchenko.
“When they started pulling people out, and everyone was cut up — children and elderly people — I don’t know how long this hell can go on.”
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed 14 died in Kyiv and one in the southern city of Odesa. There were also reports of injuries in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions.
The latest attack forms part of a bigger build-up of violence, with Russian forces continuing a slow-burning offensive in eastern Ukraine and having opened a fresh front in the northeast. Peace negotiations have stalled after two rounds failed in Istanbul.
President Zelensky, who attended the G7 summit in Canada, has doubled down on his demand for tougher sanctions on Russia and greater Western assistance. He was scheduled to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the summit but Trump cut short his stay and left to return to Washington.
Putin does it simply because he can continue to fight,” Zelensky said. “The whole world, America, and Europe must finally respond as a civilized world responds to terrorists.”.
Concurrently, Ukraine has also responded with drone strikes inside Russia. Moscow claims it destroyed 147 Ukrainian drones overnight, some within the Moscow region. While Ukraine’s nighttime raids haven’t yielded comparable civilian casualties, they represent an increasingly escalating exchange of tit-for-tat responses.
In its fourth year, Russia’s indiscriminate attack on Ukraine isn’t in any rush to slow down. Calls for a ceasefire from the U.S. and other allies have gone unheeded, as civilians across Ukraine continue to pay the price of war.
Rescue operations dragged into Tuesday afternoon as officials warned victims may still be trapped under the debris. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said over 27 sites were damaged in the capital city alone.
“This kind of barbarism and destruction can’t be made normal,” Klitschko stated. “The world can’t turn a blind eye.
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