
MOSCOW/KYIV – Russia carried out a large-scale overnight strike on Ukrainian defense industry facilities and military infrastructure in response to previous Ukrainian attacks, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
Russian forces used long-range precision weapons launched from air, land and sea, including hypersonic aeroballistic missiles and attack drones, targeting military enterprises in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, as well as in the Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions, the ministry said in a statement.
Russian forces also targeted fuel and transport infrastructure used to support the Ukrainian armed forces, along with military airfields.
In another statement, the ministry said Russian air defense forces intercepted and destroyed 148 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight in multiple regions.
Earlier in the day, Ukrainian authorities said at least 10 people were killed and dozens injured in a massive overnight Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine.
Four people were killed and 58 wounded in Kyiv, including 40 who were hospitalized, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram.
The strikes sparked fires across the capital, damaging several apartment buildings and non-residential facilities, Klitschko said.
In the central Podilskyi district, a nine-story apartment building partially collapsed following a suspected missile strike, the mayor said.
Ukraine's State Service for Emergencies said that search and rescue efforts at the strike sites were still underway as of Tuesday morning.
In the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine, six people were killed and 36 others injured, the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration reported.
New conflicts
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting convened to probe the terrorist attack in Starobelsk on Monday that Kyiv's leadership, through deliberate crimes against children in Starobelsk and Genichesk, has itself opted to fundamentally alter the nature of the entire conflict.
Referring to two recent drone attacks targeting children and teenagers at a college in Starobelsk and a residential building in Genichesk, Putin said the Kyiv leadership has decided to "open a new chapter in its series of crimes" and give the conflict as a whole "a new dimension," adding that it was "their choice."
READ MORE: Russia's Rosatom says Ukrainian drone struck Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
On May 22, a large-scale Ukrainian drone assault hit the campus of Starobelsk College, affiliated with Luhansk Pedagogical University, causing the collapse of a student dormitory building. Eighty-six students were inside the building at the time of the strike. The attack left more than 60 civilians harmed, with 21 fatalities.
On the evening of May 31, Ukrainian drones struck a residential apartment building in Genichesk. A child was killed while 11 others were injured.
