KYIV: At least five civilians were killed overnight Sunday as Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine, deploying drones, missiles, and guided aerial bombs that targeted civilian infrastructure.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that Moscow fired over 50 ballistic missiles and around 500 drones across nine regions. In Lviv, four people—including a 15-year-old—died in a combined missile and drone strike, according to local authorities and Ukraine’s emergency service. Six more were injured.
The historic western city, usually spared from frontline fighting, saw two districts lose power and public transport temporarily suspended. Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said a business complex on Lviv’s outskirts caught fire, stressing it was a civilian facility unrelated to Ukraine’s military efforts.
One person was also injured in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, south of Lviv, Governor Svitlana Onyshchuk reported.
In Zaporizhzhia, a nighttime aerial assault killed a civilian woman and injured nine others, including a 16-year-old girl, Governor Ivan Fedorov said. The strike, carried out with drones and guided bombs, damaged residential buildings and left around 73,000 households without power.
Meanwhile, in Sloviansk, a key city in the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control, six people—including a child—were hurt when a Russian-guided bomb hit an apartment block. Regional prosecutors reported that Saturday evening airstrikes also damaged over two dozen residential buildings, cars, shops, and a café.
Zelenskyy renewed his call for Western partners to provide additional air defense systems to counter Russia’s “aerial terror.” He wrote on Telegram: “The Russians again targeted our infrastructure, everything that ensures people can live a normal life. We need more protection and rapid implementation of all defense agreements, especially air defense, to make this aerial terror pointless.”
For months, Ukraine has carried out long-range strikes on Russia, often targeting Moscow’s oil infrastructure and worsening fuel shortages. Meanwhile, Moscow has intensified attacks on Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter—a tactic Kyiv says is aimed at depriving civilians of heat, electricity, and water. Russian strikes have also increasingly targeted the country’s railway network, critical for military transport. On Saturday, a drone attack on a railway station in Shostka in northern Ukraine killed one and injured dozens.
