Russia bombards Ukraine with one of largest air assaults of the war

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia unleashed one of its largest drone and missile barrages of the war on Ukraine overnight, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens across the country in an hourslong assault that Ukrainian officials said showed Moscow had no interest in a truce.

It was the second large-scale attack in two nights and the third in just a week, part of a broader, recent escalation by Russia that has brought a spike in civilian casualties despite ceasefire negotiations. Ukraine has also stepped up its own air attacks on Russian territory, though on a smaller scale and with far fewer civilian deaths.

The overnight strikes underscored how months of diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire have failed to yield a breakthrough as Russian President Vladimir Putin has dragged his feet on agreeing to any temporary truce, adding conditions that he knows Ukraine will not accept. And after threatening for weeks to walk away from the negotiations, U.S. President Donald Trump now appears to be doing exactly that, telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution to the war themselves.

Ukraine’s air force said Sunday that Russia had launched 69 ballistic and cruise missiles along with 298 attack drones, adding that about two-thirds of the missiles and nearly all the drones were shot down. Air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said in an interview that it was the largest bombardment of the war in terms of the number of weapons used. Those numbers could not be independently verified.

It was the latest in a string of recent Russian attacks to involve swarms of more than 250 drones — a number unthinkable at the start of the war but now made possible by mass weapons production.

Attacks involving swarms of drones are often designed to overwhelm the enemy’s air defenses. Ukraine’s are already stretched, and each consecutive attack adds further strain. The latest barrage also hit western and southern regions of Ukraine which, unlike the capital, Kyiv, are poorly protected by air defenses, increasing the likelihood of fatalities.

There was hope in Ukraine that the ceasefire talks that Trump initiated in February would at least ease air attacks on civilian areas. Instead, the violence has intensified. Ukrainian civilian deaths have risen each month since February, according to the United Nations, reaching 209 in April — one of the highest monthly tolls in two years.

Images and videos released by Ukraine’s emergency services captured the scale of the devastation Sunday morning.

They showed firefighters spraying water on an apartment building in the southern city of Mykolaiv whose roof had been smashed, its shattered beams jutting into the sky like broken ribs. In the village of Markhalivka, outside Kyiv, emergency workers walked down a street where the houses on both sides were consumed by fire and debris covered the pavement. In the western Zhytomyr region, photos showed rescuers pulling the bodies of three children from houses that had been reduced to rubble.

In addition to the casualties in Zhytomyr, four people were killed in the Kyiv region, four others in the western Khmelnytsky region and one in Mykolaiv, according to local authorities.

Sunday afternoon, Markhalivka was a scene of devastation. On the street where firefighters had battled multiple blazes earlier, residents now combed through the rubble of houses amid the smell of burning. About half the street was destroyed by what the police said were three missile strikes. Locals said a nearby military base may have been the target.

Anzhelika Krasovets, 49, saw her home destroyed by the strike. She, her husband and their three children ended up trapped under rubble, bruised and with cuts to their heads — but all miraculously survived.

“We pulled the children out ourselves; I don’t know how we managed it,” she said. “And the shelling was still ongoing.”

Her husband, still in pajamas, was sifting through the debris of their house searching for documents, clothes and anything else that could be saved. Several of their five cats and a dog remained trapped beneath the wreckage.

Henadii Shvets, 72, also escaped the attack despite damage to his house. Blood from his son, who was seriously wounded in the back, stained the house’s floor. Their neighbor, however, did not make it out. He died in his bed, Shvets said, his body “torn apart and covered in blood.”

Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said that 13 regions had come under attack and that more than 60 people were injured. He added that more than 80 residential buildings were damaged.

Zelenskyy, who has accused the Kremlin of playing for time in peace negotiations, cited the attacks as further proof that “Russia is dragging out this war and continues to kill every day.” In a post on social media, he called for increased pressure on Putin.

“The world may go on a weekend break, but the war continues, regardless of weekends or weekdays,” Zelenskyy wrote. “This cannot be ignored. Silence of America, silence of others around the world only encourage Putin.”

Russia appears to have been increasingly targeting cities more intensively. Last month, a strike near a playground and another on a crowded city center killed 53 civilians, including several children.

Despite the ongoing fighting, throughout more than three years of war Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly exchanged prisoners — one of the few areas where the two sides have kept an open line of communication.

Hours after the air assault Sunday, Russia and Ukraine said they had wrapped up a major prisoner exchange that began Friday. Each side said that 303 more people had been released, bringing the total number of prisoners exchanged from each side to 1,000 — the largest swap of the war.

The agreement to exchange prisoners was the only concrete outcome from ceasefire negotiations held this month in Istanbul — the first time the two sides have engaged in direct talks since the early months of the war.

It was after those Istanbul talks that Trump signaled a readiness to step back. Following a phone call with Putin, he backed off his demand that Russia declare an immediate ceasefire and instead endorsed Putin’s call for direct negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.

For many Ukrainians, Russia’s professed commitment to ceasefire negotiations was little more than a tactic to string Trump along while continuing the fight.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said last week that Moscow would present Kyiv with a draft document outlining its conditions for a peace deal after the prisoner exchange concluded, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

On Sunday afternoon, it was not immediately clear whether a document had been presented. But Ukrainian officials expect Russia to repeat demands made in Istanbul — including that Ukraine withdraw from some territories it still controls — which are a non-starter for Kyiv.

Standing by her damaged home in the village of Markhalivka, Oksana Ivenuk said, “We’re extremely exhausted after all these years of war.” Then, she broke into tears.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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