Russian ballistic missiles and drones struck cities across Ukraine overnight into Thursday, killing at least eight civilians and wounding dozens more in a bombardment that reached from the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region to the western city of Lviv, officials said.
The heaviest casualties were reported in Dnipropetrovsk, where a Russian strike killed six people and wounded 10 others while damaging civilian infrastructure. Children were among the dead, including a 6-year-old girl and boys aged 11 and 17 in the Kryvyi Rih area, according to regional officials. The attack added to a grim toll that has become almost routine in the region, which sits within range of Russian glide bombs and ballistic missiles launched from occupied territory.
In Lviv, near the Polish border, a cruise missile attack wounded at least 34 people, including three children aged 6, 13 and 15, according to local authorities. The city was struck in the early morning hours, with the worst damage concentrated on residential buildings; more than 20 apartment blocks were damaged along with a school and two kindergartens, officials said.
In the capital, Kyiv, Russian forces struck with ballistic missiles, killing a 31-year-old man and wounding two others while damaging residential buildings, a market and storage facilities, according to the city’s military administration.
The overnight barrage came as Moscow has expanded its near-daily bombardment of Ukrainian cities, a pattern Ukrainian officials say is intended to exploit gaps in the country’s air defenses at a time when Kyiv faces a critical shortage of Western-supplied interceptor missiles. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly pressed allies, including the United States, for additional Patriot batteries and interceptors capable of stopping ballistic missiles, which are far harder to shoot down than slower-moving drones.
The strike on Lviv, so close to NATO territory, has renewed concern in Poland and other neighboring states about stray munitions crossing into alliance airspace, an issue that has surfaced repeatedly in recent Russian bombardments of western Ukraine. Polish authorities have periodically scrambled fighter jets during large-scale Russian strikes as a precaution.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that improving air defense remains the country’s most urgent task for saving lives, and has argued that Ukraine cannot address the threat from Russian missiles without additional support from Western partners. Russian officials have not commented in detail on the individual strikes, though Moscow has consistently described its long-range campaign as targeting military and defense-related infrastructure.
Rescue operations continued into Thursday in Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk as crews worked through damaged apartment buildings searching for survivors, a now-familiar scene in a war that has entered its fifth year with no ceasefire in sight.
Sources: NPR, Al Jazeera, U.S. News