Russia launched a fresh wave of pre-dawn missile and drone attacks on Ukraine on Tuesday, striking Kyiv and several other large cities as it stepped up a deadly bombing campaign that began a day earlier and was one of the largest of the war.
The barrage hit a hotel in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, sparked brush fires in parks in Kyiv and set off air alarms throughout most of the country. Russia has over the past year fired large volleys roughly once a month in attempts to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems with combinations of drones and missiles launched from multiple directions.
The bombardment that began on Monday could have additional significance, however, because it comes three weeks after Ukraine’s military launched an incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had promised a decisive response to what was the first invasion of Russia since World War II, and his spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated that message on Monday, saying that Russia would inflict “an appropriate response.”
It was unclear whether the attacks this week constituted that retaliation, though President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Monday’s barrage of ballistic and cruise missiles was “one of the largest” his country has faced since Russia’s invasion began 30 months ago.
On Tuesday, a ballistic missile attack on the hotel in Kryvyi Rih killed two people and wounded five others, the head of the regional military administration, Serhiy Lysak, wrote in a post on Telegram. Lysak posted photographs showing the collapsed ruins of the hotel, the Aurora.
Two people were killed and four others were wounded when seven exploding drones streaked into Zaporizhzhia early Tuesday, according to the regional military administrator, Ivan Fyodorov.
And in Kyiv, a loud explosion echoed in the downtown area around dawn. The city’s military administration said that the capital was under a “combined rocket and drone attack of the enemy”, and the authorities said that falling debris from intercepted missiles or drones had set grass on fire in two city parks.
