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Ukraine’s emergency services announced on Friday that they had recovered three more bodies following Russia’s massive overnight attack on Kyiv earlier this week, bringing the death toll to 30.
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On Wednesday night into Thursday morning, Russian forces launched a wave of missile and drone strikes on the Ukrainian capital, reportedly hitting more than 20 sites across the city and injuring more than 90 people in what the local mayor described as Moscow’s “most massive attack” on Kyiv.
Ukraine’s air force said the attack included 570 air attack assets, including four Zircon missiles, 24 Iskander ballistic missiles, and 496 Shahed-type drones.
The Ukrainian branch of the Red Cross said its humanitarian warehouse in Kyiv had been destroyed in the strikes, with around €1.5 million worth of aid and equipment lost.
European officials have expressed outrage following the attack, with the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas calling for fresh sanctions on Moscow.
“Today, I will propose to sanction more entities supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex in response to the strikes. The more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed,” she said on Thursday.
Two people were also killed in a drone strike on the Romny area of Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region overnight Thursday, according to Oleh Hryhorov, the head of the Sumy Oblast Military Administration.
Hryhorov said drones struck a residential building in the area, killing two women and injuring a man.
A further 11 people were injured in attacks on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, per Ivan Fedorov, the head of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Military Administration.
Following the attack on Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed calls for increased anti-ballistic missile defences, as Ukraine’s supply of US-made Patriot interceptors continues to shrink.
“If, of course, NATO still means anything to the allies, Europe must have its own sufficient capability to defend itself against all types of threats, including this one – Russian ballistic missiles,” he said in a video address.
“We have been discussing licenses for the production of Patriots with the US Administration for a long time already,” he continued. “To reliably protect lives, we need our own production, European production here in Ukraine”.
Ukraine has been ramping up its own attacks on Russia’s energy industry in recent months, particularly targeting oil facilities.
Earlier this week, Zelenskyy announced that his forces had struck an oil refinery in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, for a second time. He said the facility was “one of Russia’s largest producers of lubricants”.
Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure have sparked a fuel crisis across Russia and Russian-occupied territories, with long queues at petrol stations and limited supply.
