Russia blasted a maternity ward in Ukraine overnight Monday as it unleashed one of its largest airstrikes of the war against Kyiv — firing more than 300 drones and missiles over the border, Ukrainian officials said.
“Today was one of the largest attacks on Kyiv,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said. “Russian missile and Shahed (drone) strikes drown out the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace.”
The mass bombardment, which followed the record airstrikes on Monday, lit up the sky in Kyiv for nearly five hours early Tuesday, leaving fires and smoke over the capital, witnesses told Reuters.
Kyiv suffered five hours of bombardments overnight in one of the largest Russian assaults on the city since the war began in 2022. Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Shattered windows littered the halls of a maternity ward in Odesa that was hit by Russian drones. REUTERSTen districts in the capital were directly hit after the Ukraine Airforce could only intercept 277 of the 315 drones fired, leaving at least one person dead and four people hospitalized, Kyiv officials said.
“[It’s] a difficult night for all of us,” Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s city military administration, summarized on Telegram.
Along with the assault on the capital, the drones also struck a maternity ward, an emergency medical building and a residential building in the southern port of Odesa, the regional governor said.
The attack killed at least two men and injured nine others in the port city, but the patients and staff at the maternity ward were spared after evacuating the hospital, Gov. Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
Ukrainian emergency responders continue to put out the flames from the early Tuesday strike in Kyiv. Ukrinform/Shutterstock
A woman sits outside a residential building that was struck by Russian drones in Odesa. AFP via Getty ImagesFootage from inside the hospital showed the aftermath of the blast, with a woman in hospital scrubs seen sweeping the shards of broken glass away as the maternity ward returned to operation on Tuesday.
The Kremlin has fired 1,451 drones and 78 missiles over the past week, according to Ukraine’s air force, the most intense airstrike campaign of the three year war.
Monday alone saw Russia fire 479 Shahed drones and 20 missiles in a record strike that included Ukrainian military targets just 40 miles from the Polish border, triggering a NATO alert.
First responders carry a body out of a destroyed building in Odessa, where two men were killed by Russian airstrikes. UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICE/AFP via Getty ImagesMoscow had vowed to retaliate hard against Kyiv over the humiliating attack earlier this month that saw Ukrainian drones damage and destroy dozens of Russia’s heavy bombers in “Operation Spider Web.”
The growing escalation of violence comes after peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv stalled, with no end to the war in sight despite the Trump administration’s efforts to reach a cease-fire deal, which Russia has repeatedly rejected.
With Post wires
