At least five civilians were killed after Russia launched a large-scale overnight aerial attack on Ukraine, striking multiple regions with drones, missiles, and guided bombs, officials said Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow deployed more than 50 ballistic missiles and around 500 drones across nine regions in one of the most intense nighttime assaults in recent weeks. He said the attacks deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure.
In the western city of Lviv, four people including a 15-year-old were killed in a combined drone and missile strike, according to regional authorities and Ukraine’s emergency service. Six others were injured. The attack knocked out power in two districts and briefly halted public transport early Sunday, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said. A fire broke out at a business complex on the city’s outskirts, which Sadovyi described as a civilian facility with no military ties.
One person was also injured in Ivano-Frankivsk, south of Lviv, local governor Svitlana Onyshchuk said.
In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a nighttime assault killed one woman and wounded nine others, including a 16-year-old girl, regional governor Ivan Fedorov reported. He said drones and guided aerial bombs destroyed residential buildings and cut power to roughly 73,000 households in the city and nearby areas.
Six people, including a child, were injured in Sloviansk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region under Ukrainian control, after a Russian guided bomb struck an apartment building on Saturday night, regional prosecutors said. They reported damage to more than two dozen residential buildings, as well as cars, shops, and a café.
Zelenskyy renewed his appeal to Ukraine’s Western allies for additional air defense systems. “Today, the Russians again targeted our infrastructure, everything that ensures people can live a normal life. We need more protection, a rapid implementation of all defense agreements, especially on air defense, to make this aerial terror pointless,” he said in a Telegram post.
The Kremlin has intensified attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter approaches, echoing tactics from previous years aimed at cutting off heat, light, and water supplies to civilians. It has also stepped up strikes on Ukraine’s railway network, a key military transport route, hitting it almost daily for the past two months.
Russian drones struck a railway station in the northern city of Shostka on Saturday, killing one person and injuring dozens.
The escalation comes amid renewed tension between Moscow and Washington. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that US delivery of long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine “will lead to the destruction of our relations,” in a video clip released by state media on Sunday.
US Vice President JD Vance said last week that Washington is considering Ukraine’s request for the missiles. His comments followed President Donald Trump’s statement at the United Nations General Assembly in September that Ukraine could reclaim all its territory “in its original form” with European support.
Ukraine has carried out its own long-range strikes on Russian targets for months, often hitting oil infrastructure and contributing to ongoing fuel shortages inside Russia.