Russia launched 948 drones at Ukraine in the largest 24-hour attack

(Patria) - Russia launched the largest air attack on Ukraine in a 24-hour period since the start of the war, hitting cities across the country with 948 drones, the BBC reported late last night.

The Ukrainian Air Force stated that 556 drones were launched from 09:00 local time on Tuesday, in an unusual daytime attack that killed at least three people and injured dozens.

In the western city of Lviv, a 16th-century Bernardine Monastery, part of the UNESCO World Heritage site in the city center, was damaged, local officials said.
In the neighboring Ivano-Frankivsk region, a maternity hospital was hit.

These attacks followed a night-time Russian attack that killed five people. Ukraine announced that 392 drones and 34 missiles were launched.

In his video address last night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the scale of the recent attacks "clearly shows that Russia has no intention of truly ending this war".

Video released earlier on Tuesday by Lviv authorities shows a fire through the roof of a residential building near the Bernardine Monastery. Separate footage released on social media shows a drone flying low over the city and hitting a residential building.

Head of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said 32 people were injured in the Russian attack.

In the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, two people were killed, and four others, including a six-year-old child, were injured, local officials said. Various buildings, including a maternity hospital, were damaged in the regional capital.

Ternopil, another city in western Ukraine, was also targeted on Tuesday. Regional authorities reported a series of direct hits, but there were no casualties.
In the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, one person was killed and thirteen were injured, said regional head Nataliya Zabolotna.

In Russian attacks during the night on eleven Ukrainian regions, five people were killed. The Ukrainian Air Force announced that it managed to shoot down most of the Russian drones and missiles, but admitted that there were several direct hits across the country.

Yurii Ihnat, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, said late last night that a "large number of drones" entered Ukrainian airspace from the north, "moving effectively in columns".

"The geography of the strikes during the day was wider than at night... It can be said that this was one of the largest attacks in a 24-hour period," he said.

In over four years of war, almost no corner of Ukraine has been untouched, but the west of the country has been hit relatively less intensely and less frequently than other areas closer to the Russian border in the east.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the war continues with unabated intensity, as Moscow carries out almost daily attacks on cities across the country.

Also on Tuesday, the governor of Russia's western Kursk region said one man was killed and thirteen people were injured in an attack by a Ukrainian drone on an agricultural enterprise.

Talks mediated by the United States, aimed at achieving a peace settlement, have stalled since the beginning of the US-Iran war in late February.

"Amid the news that the world drowns in every day, we will not allow Ukraine's sorrow to be lost, to become just another statistic, a headline that is casually skipped," wrote Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska on social media.