Russia launched missile and drone attacks targeting scores of Ukrainian regions and killing at least five people, officials said on Tuesday, a day after Moscow’s biggest air attack of the war on its neighbour.
Two people were killed when a hotel was “wiped out” by a missile in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, regional officials said. Three died in drone attacks on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Kyiv would retaliate against Russia for its attacks. He asked allies to consider joint air defence operations and provide long-range capabilities after Russia pummelled Ukrainian energy infrastructure with more than 200 missiles and drones on Monday.
During Tuesday’s attack, Ukraine downed five out of 10 incoming missiles and 60 out of 81 drones, the air force said.
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The Ukrainian air force lost track of 10 more drones that have likely come down somewhere on its territory, it said. One more crossed into Belarusian territory; 10 more were still flying around in Ukraine’s airspace on Tuesday morning, it said.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces had carried out a high-precision weapon strike on Ukraine overnight, the Interfax news agency reported. Moscow denies targeting civilians since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, although thousands have been killed.
Several Russian military bloggers said Moscow’s attacks were an “act of retaliation” for Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region – the first such action since the second World War.
In the capital Kyiv, the military administration said air defences shot down all incoming targets aimed at the city. There were no casualties and two small fires caused by debris were put out by the emergency services, local authorities said.
Two civilians may be still under the rubble of the hotel in Kryvyi Rih and five were injured in the attack, Serhiy Lisak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region where Kryvyi Rih is located, said on Telegram.
Three people were injured in the Zaporizhzhia region and four were hurt in a missile strike on the northeastern region of Kharkiv overnight, local authorities said.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Russia said the West was playing with fire by considering allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with western missiles and cautioned the United States that a third world war would not be confined to Europe.
Ukraine attacked Russia’s western Kursk region on August 6th and has carved out a slice of territory. President Vladimir Putin said there would be a worthy response from Russia to the attack.
Sergey Lavrov, who has served as Mr Putin’s foreign minister for more than 20 years, said that the West was seeking to escalate the Ukraine war and was “asking for trouble” by considering Ukrainian requests to loosen curbs on using foreign-supplied weapons.
Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Mr Putin has repeatedly warned of the risk of a much broader war involving the world’s biggest nuclear powers, though he has said Russia does not want a conflict with the US-led Nato alliance.
“We are now confirming once again that playing with fire – and they are like small children playing with matches – is a very dangerous thing for grown-up uncles and aunts who are entrusted with nuclear weapons in one or another western country,” Mr Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
“Americans unequivocally associate conversations about third world war as something that, God forbid, if it happens, will affect Europe exclusively,” Mr Lavrov said.
Mr Lavrov added that Russia was “clarifying” its nuclear doctrine.
Russia’s 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out when its president would consider using a nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons “when the very existence of the state is put under threat”.
Mr Zelenskiy said earlier this month that the assault on Russia’s Kursk region showed that Kremlin threats of retaliation were a bluff.
Russia has said that western weaponry, including British tanks and US rocket systems, have been used by Ukraine in Kursk. Kyiv has confirmed using US missiles to take out bridges in Kursk.
Washington says it was not informed about Ukraine’s plans in advance of the surprise incursion into Kursk. The United States has also said it did not take any part in the operation.
Mr Putin’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, said on Tuesday that Moscow did not believe western assertions that it had nothing to do with the Kursk attack. Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said the involvement of the United States was “an obvious fact”. – Reuters
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