Russia Delivers Its Promised Attack

Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight, killing at least 16 civilians and wounding more than 100 others, authorities said Tuesday, per the AP. The damage trapped some people under the rubble of apartment buildings. Emergency crews digging through the wreckage pulled out the body of a 3-year-old child and the bodies of a mother and her 8-year-old son in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, officials said. At least four people were killed in Kyiv and 63 people were injured, including three children, Ukraine's state emergency service said. The attack stretched from night into day and the boom of explosions reverberated across cities.

Kyiv residents had been on edge for days after Russia warned that a massive aerial attack was coming and warned foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital. None appeared to heed the call. "A large-scale attack and an explicit statement by Russia: If Ukraine is not protected from ballistic missiles and other missile strikes, those strikes will continue," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in response to the attack, urging more support from the US and European countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up Moscow's aerial campaign against Ukraine, with Russian forces recently launching a powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile for only the third time in the four-year war.

The Russian strategy seeks to take advantage of Ukraine's shortage of US-made Patriot air defense missiles, with international stocks depleted by the Iran war. That has left civilians especially vulnerable to the Russian ballistic missile barrages, even as air defenses stop most of the attack drones. "Thank God we're alive," said a Kyiv mother who spent the night lying in a bathtub for protection with her 3-year-old daughter, describing damage to their home. Russia unleashed 73 missiles and 656 drones across Ukraine, according to the country's air force, with the main targets including Kyiv, the central city of Dnipro, and the eastern cities of Poltava, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed or suppressed 40 missiles and 602 drones.