Russia launches large-scale drone and missile attack on Ukraine, kills 3 and wounds 13

Rus­sia sent waves of drones and mis­siles in an at­tack on two Ukrain­ian cities ear­ly Tues­day that killed three peo­ple and wound­ed at least thir­teen oth­ers, Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials said.

The at­tack struck the cap­i­tal, Kyiv, and the south­ern port city of Ode­sa. Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy in an on­line state­ment called the at­tack on Kyiv “one of the biggest” in the war that has raged for over three years, and said that Moscow’s forces had fired over 315 drones, most­ly Sha­heds, and sev­en mis­siles at Ukraine overnight.

“Russ­ian mis­sile and Sha­hed strikes are loud­er than the ef­forts of the Unit­ed States and oth­ers around the world to force Rus­sia in­to peace,” Ze­len­skyy wrote, urg­ing “con­crete ac­tion” from the U.S. and Eu­rope in re­sponse to the at­tack.

A ma­ter­ni­ty hos­pi­tal and res­i­den­tial build­ings in the cen­ter of the south­ern port city of Ode­sa were dam­aged in the at­tack, re­gion­al head Oleh Kiper said. Two peo­ple were killed and nine in­jured in the city, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the re­gion­al pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice.

An ad­di­tion­al vic­tim was found in Kyiv’s Obolon dis­trict, re­gion­al head Ty­mur Tkachenko wrote on Telegram.

“Russ­ian strikes are once again hit­ting not mil­i­tary tar­gets but the lives of or­di­nary peo­ple. This once again shows the true na­ture of what we are deal­ing with,” Tkachenko said.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists heard ex­plo­sions and the buzzing of drones around the city for hours.

At­tacks con­tin­ue de­spite talks

The fresh at­tacks came a day af­ter Moscow launched al­most 500 drones at Ukraine in the biggest overnight drone bom­bard­ment in the three-year war. Ukrain­ian and West­ern of­fi­cials have been an­tic­i­pat­ing a Russ­ian re­sponse to Ukraine’s au­da­cious June 1 drone at­tack on dis­tant Russ­ian air bases.

Rus­sia has been launch­ing a record-break­ing num­ber of drones and mis­siles tar­get­ing Ukraine in re­cent days, de­spite both sides trad­ing mem­o­ran­da dur­ing di­rect peace talks in Is­tan­bul on June 2 that set out con­di­tions for a po­ten­tial cease­fire. How­ev­er, the in­clu­sion of claus­es that both sides see as non­starters make any quick deal un­like­ly, and a cease­fire, long sought by Kyiv, re­mains elu­sive.

The on­ly tan­gi­ble out­come of the talks has been in the ex­change of pris­on­ers of war, with a swap start­ing on Mon­day to re­lease sol­diers aged be­tween 18 and 25.

A sim­i­lar ex­change was al­so an­nounced for the bod­ies of fall­en sol­diers held by both sides, al­though no sched­ule for that has been re­leased. Asked to com­ment on the ex­change of bod­ies with Ukraine, Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said that it has re­mained un­clear when it could take place and how many bod­ies of Russ­ian sol­diers Ukraine was go­ing to hand over. He again ac­cused Kyiv of drag­ging its feet on the ex­change.

“There is one unar­guable fact, we have had trucks with bod­ies stand­ing ready for it on the bor­der for sev­er­al days,” he said in a call with re­porters.

Kyiv res­i­dents seek shel­ter

Plumes of smoke were vis­i­ble in Kyiv as air de­fense forces worked to shoot down drones and mis­siles Tues­day morn­ing.

Mean­while, Ukrain­ian res­i­dents took shel­ter and slept in metro sta­tions dur­ing the hours­long at­tack. Ni­na No­sivets, 32, and her 8-month-old son, Lev­ko, were among them.

“I just try not to think about all this, silent­ly curled up like a mouse, wait un­til it all pass­es, the at­tacks. Dis­tract the child some­how be­cause its prob­a­bly the hard­est thing for him to bear,” she said.

Krysty­na Se­mak, a 37-year-old Kyiv res­i­dent, said the ex­plo­sions fright­ened her and she ran to the metro at 2 a.m. with her rug.

Rus­sia has been launch­ing a record-break­ing num­ber of drones and mis­siles tar­get­ing Ukraine while the two coun­tries con­tin­ue to swap pris­on­ers of war, the on­ly tan­gi­ble out­come of re­cent di­rect peace talks held in Is­tan­bul. A cease­fire, long sought by Kyiv, re­mains elu­sive.

In Kyiv, fires broke out in at least four dis­tricts af­ter de­bris from shot down drones fell on the roofs of res­i­den­tial build­ings and ware­hous­es, ac­cord­ing to the Kyiv City Mil­i­tary Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Va­syl Pe­senko, 25, stood in his kitchen, dam­aged in the at­tack.

“I was ly­ing in bed, as al­ways hop­ing that these Sha­heds (drones) would fly past me, and I heard that Sha­hed (that hit the house),” he said. “I thought that it would fly away, but it flew clos­er and clos­er and every­thing blew away.”

The Russ­ian at­tack sparked 19 fires across Ukraine, In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Ihor Kly­menko wrote on Telegram. “Rus­sia must an­swer for every crime it com­mits. Un­til there is jus­tice, there will be no se­cu­ri­ty. For Ukraine. And for the world,” he said.

Death toll from re­cent at­tacks ris­es

In Moscow, the De­fense Min­istry said that a group strike ear­ly Tues­day tar­get­ed arms plants in Kyiv, as well as mil­i­tary head­quar­ters, troops lo­ca­tions, mil­i­tary air bases and arms de­pots across Ukraine. “The goals of the strikes have been achieved, all the des­ig­nat­ed tar­gets have been hit,” it said in a state­ment.

The death tolls from pre­vi­ous Russ­ian strikes al­so con­tin­ued to rise Tues­day. In Kharkiv, res­cuers found the body of a per­son trapped un­der the rub­ble of a build­ing that was hit in a drone-and-mis­sile at­tack Sat­ur­day, city may­or Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram. The dis­cov­ery brings the num­ber of ca­su­al­ties to five, with five more peo­ple po­ten­tial­ly still trapped un­der the de­bris, Terekhov said.

Mean­while, in the north­ern city of Sumy, a 17-year-old boy died in the hos­pi­tal Tues­day morn­ing af­ter be­ing in­jured in a Russ­ian strike on June 3, act­ing may­or Artem Kobzar wrote on Telegram. It brings the num­ber killed in the at­tack to six.

Air­ports close amid strikes on Rus­sia

Else­where, the Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry on Tues­day morn­ing re­port­ed down­ing 102 Ukrain­ian drones over Russ­ian re­gions and Crimea, the Black Sea penin­su­la Moscow il­le­gal­ly an­nexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The drones were downed both over re­gions on the bor­der with Ukraine and deep­er in­side Rus­sia, in­clud­ing cen­tral Moscow and Leningrad re­gions, ac­cord­ing to the De­fense Min­istry’s state­ment.

Be­cause of the drone at­tack, flights were tem­porar­i­ly re­strict­ed in and out of mul­ti­ple air­ports across Rus­sia, in­clud­ing all four air­ports in Moscow and the Pulko­vo air­port in St. Pe­ters­burg, the coun­try’s sec­ond largest city.

By VASIL­ISA STEPA­NENKO and SAMYA KUL­LAB

KYIV, Ukraine (AP)

AP jour­nal­ist Il­lia Novikov con­tributed to this re­port.