Russia Launches Huge Drone Attack on Western Ukraine by NATO’s Border, Killing Six

Russia unleashed a massive daytime drone attack on Ukraine on Wednesday, targeting critical infrastructure in the west, killing at least six people and prompting NATO-member Poland to scramble fighter jets, officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that since midnight Moscow had launched waves of at least 800 drones, with the attack deliberately targeting regions closest to the borders of NATO countries.

“It certainly cannot be called a coincidence that one of the longest massive Russian attacks against Ukraine takes place precisely at the time when the President of the United States arrived for a visit to China,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram app, adding it was an attempt by Russia to draw global attention back to its agenda.

Zelenskiy said that six people were killed and dozens more injured in the attack, which spanned other Ukrainian regions. Ukraine’s railway infrastructure was struck 23 times during the barrage, damaging trains, railway depots and bridges, a presidential advisor said, though traffic was maintained.

It was the first such major attack after a three-day U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, which ended on Monday.

Poland scrambled fighter jets as a preventative measure due to the Russian air strikes on Ukraine, the Polish army said.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orban said Hungary “deeply” condemned Russian drone strikes on ethnic Hungarian regions in western Ukraine and summoned the Russian ambassador, while Slovakia closed border crossings with Ukraine for security reasons.

Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence said the drone assault was designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, warning of subsequent missile strikes.

It said that Moscow targeted critical infrastructure and essential services in major cities, including energy, defense industry facilities and government buildings.

Attacks in Western Ukraine

Ukraine’s air force said Russia had used the territory of Belarus and Moldova to fly the drones towards Ukraine. Including attacks overnight, Russia had launched 892 drones at Ukraine as of 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and the attack was ongoing, it said.

Ukrainian state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz said that Russian strikes had damaged two of its facilities in the northeastern region of Kharkiv and the northern region of Zhytomyr.

Governors and mayors reported strikes and explosions across western Ukraine.

Three people were killed and another six wounded in the northwestern region of Rivne. An attack on a critical infrastructure facility in Zhovkva left the western town without power. There was also a strike on a residential building in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, local officials said.

The regional governor of Ukraine’s far-west Zakarpattia region said the ongoing attack was the heaviest since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, with strikes on critical infrastructure sites in several districts.

Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to the defense minister, said the barrage highlighted the evolving use of drones by Moscow, with tactics changing from attack to attack.

This time, large numbers of drones were moving along between 5 km and 10 km (3 miles and 6 miles) from the Belarus border to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses and to get through to the western regions, he said.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion more than four years ago, it has mainly carried out major drone and missile strikes at night. In recent months, however, it has frequently struck during daytime.

Russian drones also attacked the southern cities of Kherson and Odesa, where at least nine people were wounded, regional officials said.

(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk and by Yuliia Dysa in Kyiv; Additional reporting by Olena Harmash in Kyiv; Editing by Daniel Flynn, William Maclean, Alexandra Hudson)

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