Russia, Ukraine Trade Deadly Strikes; Kyiv Urges Stronger Global Response

Russian attacks killed four people across Ukraine on Saturday, officials said, as the aerial war between Moscow and Kyiv intensifies.

Russia has struck Ukraine with cruise and ballistic missiles, glide bombs, and jet-powered drones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Russia is escalating daily and urged international partners to choose stronger responses to prevent the war from spreading. He listed numerous strikes on residential homes in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, and the Odesa, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions.

Two women died in Zaporizhzhia when their home was destroyed, and a separate Russian attack in Sumy killed two people. Meanwhile, Ukraine continued to target Russian oil refineries and industrial sites with long-range drones. An Ukrainian drone attack in Russia's southern Krasnodar region killed three people and wounded two, according to local officials. Ukrainian attacks also killed three people overnight in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

Earlier in the week, Zelenskyy appealed at the United Nations for countries to deprive Russia of revenue through sanctions and trade restrictions. Despite years of diplomatic efforts, no breakthrough toward ending the conflict has been achieved. A Kyiv Post analysis of open-source strike data indicates Ukraine has conducted approximately three times more long-range drone strikes against targets in Russia than Russia has launched in the opposite direction over the past 100 days.

The analysis also found that the cumulative explosive payload delivered by Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign often matches, and at times exceeds, the total weight of warheads launched by Russia against Ukraine on a given night.