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KYIV: Russian air strikes killed 17 people and injured more than 40 in Kyiv and the surrounding region on Thursday as President Volodymyr Zelensky said a failure by Ukraine’s allies to replenish its stock of air defence missiles was costing lives.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched dozens of cruise missiles, as well as ballistic and hypersonic ones, and 168 drones, in a massive overnight attack.
The air force said that nearly 90pc of the drones and most of the cruise missiles were downed. It did not specify whether any of the more deadly ballistic missiles were intercepted — having said last week that providing such information was giving Russia cause to celebrate.
Zelensky called Thursday’s strike one of the most “cynical, calculated, and large-scale” of the 4-1/2-year war. The upper floors of a nine-storey residential block were destroyed in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district, where at least eight people were killed, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. He declared Friday a day of mourning.
