BBC:
A Russian missile and drone attack killed at least 18 people across Ukraine overnight, including two children, marking one of Moscow’s largest assaults in recent months.
An eight-year-old boy and a woman pulled from the rubble of an apartment block were among 12 people killed in Dnipro, regional officials said. In the capital Kyiv, six people were killed.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said civilian infrastructure and energy facilities had been targeted across the country, with more than 100 people injured.
Russia’s defence ministry said the strikes had been a response to previous Ukrainian attacks, saying in a statement that the “strike objectives” had all been achieved.
Moscow, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, last week warned it would launch “systematic strikes” after accusing Kyiv of a deadly attack on a student dormitory in an occupied part of eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv said it had hit a Russian military unit.
Zelensky had warned a “massive strike” was possible in his nightly video address on Monday, and urged residents to pay special attention to air raid alerts.
On Tuesday morning, he said Russia had launched 656 strike drones and 73 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and anti-ship – in the overnight attack.
“We urgently need help from the United States in supplying missiles for Patriot systems”, the Ukrainian president said, referring to interception hardware used to intercept Russian missiles.
Patriot missiles have been in short supply, exacerbated by the US and Israeli war against Iran.
Since returning to power last year, Trump has also stopped direct supplies to Ukraine, so Kyiv’s European allies have been buying them from the US before sending them to Ukraine.
“The main strike was on Kyiv, where dozens of residential buildings and other purely civilian infrastructure were damaged again,” Zelensky said.
Rescuers searching through the rubble of an apartment building in Dnipro where 12 people were killed recovered the bodies of a boy, 8, and a woman, regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha said, adding that another child had been killed in the blast.
The attack “essentially demolished” part of the building, Zelensky wrote on X.
More than 90 people were injured across both cities, while Kharkiv in the north-east – which also saw its energy facilities and civilian infrastructure hit – reported 10 injured, including a child.
