A local woman, Olga, 35, and her daughter Natalia, 6, walk at the site of a Russian strike on a residential area in Kyiv, Ukraine, June 2, amid the Russian invasion. EPA-Yonhap
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight, killing at least 22 civilians and wounding 138 others, authorities said Tuesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated Moscow’s aerial campaign in recent weeks in an apparent bid to take advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made air defense systems and persuade an increasingly pessimistic audience at home that Moscow is prevailing in the 4-year-old war.
Emergency rescue crews digging through the wreckage of apartment buildings pulled out the bodies of a 3-year-old child as well as those of a woman and her 8-year-old son in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, officials said.
The attack stretched past dawn, with explosions reverberating across cities. Officials said 16 people were killed in Dnipro and six in Kyiv.
