Russia has fired at least 800 drones in a massive daytime barrage on about 20 regions of Ukraine, killing at least six people and wounding dozens, including children, in one of the longest attacks by Moscow in the four-year-old war.
The attack began in mid-morning and lasted for hours in the capital of Kyiv, the western city of Lviv near Poland, and the port of Odesa on the Black Sea, among other population centres, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app.
“Our soldiers are defending Ukraine, but Russia’s obvious goal is to overload air defences,” Zelenskiy said, as the bombardment stretched into the late afternoon.
He cautioned that a cruise and ballistic missile attack could follow the drone barrage.
It was “one of the longest, massive Russian attacks against Ukraine,” he said on social media.
It also rattled neighbours. Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said his new government summoned the Russian ambassador over a drone attack near Hungary’s border, in a significant shift from his predecessor Viktor Orbán's friendly relations with Moscow.
“The Hungarian government strongly condemns the Russian attack on Transcarpathia,” Magyar told journalists, adding that Foreign Minister Anita Orbán will speak with the ambassador on Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, drone debris fell in an open area in Kyiv’s Obolonskyi district with no casualties, city officials said, as air defence systems engaged Russian drones over the capital.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said emergency services responded to the scene. Explosions were heard across the city earlier on Wednesday.
Three people were killed in a drone attack in the Rivne region west of Kyiv, according to Oleksandr Koval, head of the regional military administration.
Moscow’s attacks are unrelenting, even as Ukraine is emboldened by its recent military accomplishments and as US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin said — without providing evidence — that the war could be approaching an end.
On Tuesday, Zelenskiy said, 14 Ukrainian regions came under attack, followed by overnight strikes on Ukraine’s residential, energy and railway infrastructure.
“It is important to support Ukraine and not remain silent about Russia’s war. Every time the war disappears from the top of the news, it encourages Russia to become even more savage,” Zelenskiy said.
Trump said on Tuesday that he believes Moscow and Kyiv will soon reach a deal to end fighting.
“The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” Trump said as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing.
“Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.”
Putin said in a speech last weekend that his invasion of Ukraine is possibly “coming to an end”.
Neither leader elaborated on what persuaded them about the possibility of peace in Europe’s longest conflict since World War II.
US-led diplomatic efforts over the past year to end the war have fizzled after making no progress on key issues, such as whether Russia gets to keep Ukrainian land it has seized and what can be done to deter Moscow from invading again.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated on Wednesday that Moscow’s fundamental terms are unchanged, with Putin insisting that Ukraine pull its troops from the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but hasn't fully captured.
On the 1250-kilometre front line, the advance of Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army has been slowing every month since October, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Russia’s spring offensive has floundered, with Russian forces recording a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024, the Washington-based think tank said.
“Not only are Ukrainian defensive lines holding, but Ukrainian forces have managed to contest the tactical initiative in several areas of the front line even as Russia continues to lose disproportionate amounts of manpower to achieve minimal gains,” the institute said on Tuesday.
