Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Telegram
Ukraine came under massive aerial bombardment early Tuesday as Russian forces used missiles, including Kinzhal rockets, and Iranian-made Shahed drones to attack the country, according to local media reports.
An air-raid warning lasted for some eight hours in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the surrounding Kyiv region, with about a dozen attack drones and several missiles downed near Kyiv, according to city administration head Serhii Popko, who added that “everything flying towards the capital was destroyed” and that there had been no casualties reported.
A Russian missile hit a four-storey hotel in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine at midnight, partially destroying it, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. It added that two people were killed and five others were injured in the attack, and that the search for two people believed to be trapped in the rubble was ongoing.
Three people were killed and five more were injured in Russian attacks on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Governor Ivan Fyodorov wrote on Telegram, adding that the region had sustained some 208 airstrikes on 14 population centres over the course of the day.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) also launched a number of drone strikes on Russian territory overnight, with the Russian Defence Ministry reporting on Tuesday that three drones had been shot down over the southwestern Belgorod region, and two over the neighbouring Kursk region.
Nevertheless, drones injured five people in two villages in the Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram late on Monday, adding that the border village of Vyazovoye was to be evacuated, the fourth such evacuation announced in the region in the last week. Gladkov said affected residents would be given one-off payments of 15,000 rubles (€147).
The neighbouring Kursk region, where the AFU began an incursion on 6 August, issued several air raid warnings overnight, acting Governor Alexey Smirnov said, while Igor Kutsak, the mayor of the regional capital Kursk, reported that a drone strike on the city had been repelled.
