Russia launches nearly 1,000 drones, missiles at Ukraine in largest 24-hour barrage since war began
Russia launched nearly 1,000 drones and missiles at Ukraine, starting overnight and continuing for several hours Tuesday in a large-scale daylight attack -- in a barrage that saw the largest number of drones and missiles fired in a 24-hour period since the start of the war more than four year ago.
At least seven people were killed and 73 injured across the country, including children. The day-time attack particularly targeted cities in western Ukraine, normally considered relatively safer, hitting civilian areas, including damaging a maternity hospital, according to local authorities. A drone slammed into a UNESCO world heritage site in central Lviv, with a video showing a fire in a residential building next the 16th-century Bernardine monastery.
"The scale of this attack clearly shows that Russia has no intention of truly ending this war," Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address on Tuesday, adding that "without additional and strong pressure on Russia, and without significant Russian losses there in Moscow, they will have no desire to move away from war and return to peace."
Zelenskyy said Russia's targets included the energy sector in the city of Lviv in western Ukraine.
"Unfortunately, ordinary residential buildings were also hit, including city centers and the historic center of Lviv. There was a fire in buildings of the Church of St. Andrew in Lviv, a church whose history dates back to the early 17th century," Zelenskyy said.
In total, 426 aerial attack assets were recorded overnight -- most of them drones, according to Ukraine's air force.
During the day, Russia launched 556 more drones, according to Ukraine's air force. Of those, 541 were shot down, it said.
The attacks come as Russia has begun its spring offensive, seeking to push forward in eastern Ukraine with armored units as the Kremlin seeks to seize all of the Donbas region.
So far the offensive has made little progress, while Ukraine’s military has claimed to have inflicted disastrous casualties on Russian forces. Ukraine’s commander in chief, General Oleksandr Syrskiy, has alleged in less than a week Russia saw more than 8,700 troops killed and wounded. ABC News has not independently verified those numbers.
