Russia launched one of the biggest attacks of the year against Ukraine

OThe attacks caused at least 10 deaths and dozens of injuries, a count that is expected to worsen as relief operations continue, Ukrainian authorities announced.

An unknown number of people were buried under the rubble of buildings hit during the strikes, although Ukrainian authorities said air defenses shot down most of the missiles and drones.

Russian forces used a wide variety of weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles, Zelensky said, cited by the US agency AP.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said Russia “apparently threw everything it had” at targets across Ukraine.

There had not been such a barrage of Russian missiles “for a long time”, the spokesman told Ukrainian television, according to the Spanish agency EFE.

The roughly 18-hour attack, which began on Thursday and continued overnight, hit six cities, including the capital Kyiv, and other areas from east to west Ukraine, authorities said.

“A maternity hospital, educational institutions, a shopping center, high-rise buildings and private houses, a commercial warehouse, a parking lot. Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zaporijia and our other cities,” said Zelensky, describing locations and targets of attacks.

The Ukrainian President assured that “all services are working intensively and providing the necessary assistance to people” and promised a response.

“We will definitely respond to the terrorists for their attacks. And we will fight to guarantee the security of our country, of all our cities, of all our people,” he stated.

“Russian terror has to lose – and that’s exactly how it will be,” he added, quoted by the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klitschko, announced that the metro service had resumed, after an interruption due to one of the stations, Lukyanivska, being affected, according to Ukrinform.

The Russian state agency TASS reported that one of the targets in the capital was a military aviation equipment factory, located near the Lukyanivska metro station.

In Lviv, a missile hit an apartment block, killing one person and injuring three, according to the head of the regional military administration, Maksym Kozytskyi, cited by EFE.

The city mayor’s office announced that more than a dozen Shahed-type ‘kamikaze drones’ were launched against the region bordering Poland.

In Kharkiv (northeast), authorities recorded the death of a civilian – a 35-year-old man – and 11 injured, according to the president of the regional military administration, Oleg Synegubov.

Warehouses and industrial facilities, a transport vehicle depot, a medical center and an ambulance, among other infrastructure, were also damaged.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region (center), the head of the military administration, Sergei Lysak, spoke of a “tragic morning” in which Russian rockets hit “almost a dozen people and four died.”

In the provincial capital of Dnipro, a projectile hit a shopping center, causing a fire and damage to a maternity ward and a pediatric hospital.

In Odessa (south), authorities have so far recorded two deaths and 15 civilians hospitalized, including two children aged 6 and 8 who were injured in missile attacks on apartment buildings.

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