Russia pounded Ukraine with dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones, killing eight people in overnight attacks on Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, decrying shortages of air defence supplies and urging allies to help.
Russia launched more than 70 missiles and about 280 drones, Zelenskiy said in a statement on the Telegram app.
The capital Kyiv and the western region of Lviv on Ukraine’s border with Poland were the main focus of the attack, the Ukrainian air force said.
Poland, a European Union and NATO member, scrambled fighter jets to secure its airspace during the attack.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said a Russian cruise missile crossed into Poland, after authorities there found a crater and debris in a field following reports of an explosion.
“So far, eight people have been reported killed across the country,” Zelenskiy said, posting pictures of destroyed houses, fires and rescuers clearing through rubble. “Dozens of people were injured, and everyone is receiving the necessary medical care.”
Zelenskiy added that only the “extraordinary expertise” of Ukrainian air defence units helped save lives when air defence missiles were not provided or delivered slowly.
Air defence units shot down 55 missiles and 265 drones but only one of nine ballistic missiles, Ukraine’s air force said, adding that 11 missiles and 17 drones hit targets at 20 locations.
The US-made Patriot air defence system is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of downing Russia’s ballistic missiles, which travel at several times the speed of sound, but they are in chronically short supply globally.
A day of mourning was announced for Friday in a village in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where six people, including three children, were killed, regional officials said.
One person was killed in Kyiv, and another in Poltava in central Ukraine, officials said.
In Kyiv, where air alerts lasted more than five hours overnight, thousands of people sheltered in metro stations.
