Russia unleashes drones, missiles
Attacks stepped up after diplomacy trips in Kyiv and Moscow
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia stepped up its missile and drone attacks against Ukraine on Wednesday, killing students and other civilians, in a violent follow-up to dueling highlevel diplomatic missions aimed at bringing peace after 13 months of war.
“Russia is shelling the city with bestial savagery,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a Telegram post accompanying video showing what he said was a Russian missile striking a nine-story apartment building on a busy road in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia. “Residential areas where ordinary people and children live are being fired at.”
At least one person was killed in the attack shown in the Zaporizhzhia video, apparently recorded by closed circuit TV cameras. Elsewhere, Moscow’s forces launched exploding drones before dawn, killing seven people in or near a student dormitory near Kyiv.
Ukrainian media showed several angles of the missile raining down on an apartment building across the street from a shopping mall in Zaporizhzhia, producing a huge plume of gray and black smoke, with bits of concrete flying into the air as cars whizzed by. Videos showed the violent outcome of the attack: charred apartments, flames and smoke billowing out of several floors of the buildings, and piles of broken concrete and shards of glass on the ground. Two children were among the wounded, said Zaporizhzhia City Council Secretary Anatolii Kurtiev, adding that 25 people needed hospital treatment, with three in critical condition.
Zaporizhzhia city is about 60 miles from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — Europe’s largest — which has previously come under threat during the war and has been shut down for months. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency reported the plant had suffered another loss of a backup external power source. Its six reactors still need power to cool nuclear fuel, and were relying on only a primary source Wednesday, the IAEA said.
Russia has denied targeting residential areas even though artillery and rocket strikes hit apartment buildings and civilian infrastructure on a daily basis. Russian officials have blamed Ukrainian air defenses for some of the deadliest strikes on apartments, saying the deployment of air defense systems in residential areas puts civilians at risk. Russia sometimes also claims Ukraine is hiding military equipment and personnel in civilian buildings.
The war, which Russia started Feb. 24, 2022, has evolved in two main directions: a front line mainly in eastern Ukraine, centered on the city of Bakhmut, and periodic Russian missile and drone strikes nationwide. In addition, periodic — although unconfirmed — Ukrainian sabotage attacks have been launched across the border into Russia. The front-line fighting largely stalemated over the winter, with expectations of major offensives by both sides expected in more favorable spring weather.
Earlier Wednesday, a drone attack damaged a high school and two dormitories in the city of Rzhyshchiv, south of the Ukrainian capital, officials said. It wasn’t clear how many people were in the dormitories at the time. The body of a 40-yearold man was pulled from the rubble on one floor, according to regional police chief Andrii Nebytov, who added that more than 20 people were hospitalized. Video showed what appeared to be a bloodied sneaker on the ground near a damaged building that had its top floor ripped off at a corner.
The drone barrage and other Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure drew a scathing response from Zelenskyy.
“Over 20 Iranian murderous drones, plus missiles, numerous shelling occasions, and that’s just in one last night of Russian terror,” he tweeted in English. “Every time someone tries to hear the word ‘peace’ in Moscow, another order is given there for such criminal strikes.”
Zaporizhzhia’s regional administration said two missiles struck the apartment block.
Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko wrote on Telegram, “It’s hell in Zaporizhzhia,” adding: “There aren’t any military facilities nearby.”
Also Wednesday, Zelenskyy made another in a periodic series of battlefield visits, meeting with soldiers and officers in the eastern Donetsk region, stopping by a hospital to see wounded troops and giving state awards to the defenders of the devastated city Bakhmut.
In other developments, the Russian military fended off a drone attack on the main harbor in the Black Sea Fleet headquarters city of Sevastopol early Wednesday, the city’s Moscow-appointed head, Mikhail Razvozhayev, reported. He said the navy destroyed three aquatic drones and that Russian warships weren’t damaged, but several civilian facilities were damaged when the drones were hit and exploded.