Russia fires record 948 drones against Ukraine over 24 hours, Kyiv says

A rare Russian daytime drone attack on Ukraine killed three people, wounded several dozen and set a building in the historic centre of the western city of Lviv aflame on Tuesday, officials said, following an overnight bombardment that killed five.

More than 550 drones were launched at Ukraine in the middle of the day, Ukraine's air force said, an abrupt change from Russia's usual tactic of launching similarly massive aerial attacks at night during its more than four-year-old war.

It followed an earlier attack overnight in which it fired hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles. Taken altogether, Russia had launched nearly 1,000 long-range drones at Ukraine since Monday evening, Kyiv said.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

UNESCO SITE HIT, CASUALTIES MOUNT

Video footage posted online showed a drone crashing into an old building next to a church in the historic centre of Lviv, some 60 kilometres from the Polish border, and Warsaw said it scrambled fighter jets.

Twenty-two people in the city were wounded, officials said.

The attack stunned residents of Lviv, which lies closer to Vienna than to the nearest active frontline on the other side of Ukraine. Although it has seen some lethal bombardments during the war, they are far less frequent than in other major cities.

Tetiana Kachkovska, a local resident, saw the drone glide past the fifth floor window of her workplace.

"My hands were shaking, my legs were shaking," she recalled. "You can't get used to this."

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said a residential building was hit by a second drone, while debris from a third drone fell in a street.

"Russia is attacking a crowded city centre in broad daylight," Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko wrote on X.

Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said part of the Bernardine monastery complex in the historic centre of Lviv, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, had been damaged.

In another western Ukrainian city, Ivano-Frankivsk, a national guard soldier and his 15-year-old daughter were killed by a strike, according to regional Governor Svitlana Onyshchuk.

She said he had attended the birth of his baby daughter at a nearby maternity hospital several days ago.

City mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv said windows at that hospital had been blown out, but that nobody inside was harmed.

Vinnytsia Governor Natalia Zabolotna said on Telegram that one person had been killed and 13 wounded in her region, southwest of Kyiv.

Air defences also engaged drones throughout the day near Kyiv.

Ukraine's air force posted warnings on social media of drones overhead in more than a dozen areas across the country.

Officials in the western region of Ternopil said two energy facilities were attacked.

Moscow denies targeting civilians, although its attacks have killed thousands since it invaded in February 2022. It says Ukraine's civil infrastructure is a legitimate target because striking it can reduce Kyiv's ability to wage war.

Ukraine has also targeted Russia's energy system, particularly oil refineries, depots and transport terminals.

OVERNIGHT ATTACK

The daytime strikes came after a wave of overnight strikes that killed five people across Ukraine and caused disruption to power supplies in Moldova. Ukraine's air force said Russia had launched 34 missiles and 392 drones overnight and that 25 missiles and 365 drones had been downed or neutralised.

Two people were killed and 12 wounded, including a five-year-old child, in the attack near the eastern city of Poltava, a regional official said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said damage had been reported in 11 regions and issued a new appeal for allies to supply Kyiv with air defence munitions.

He has repeatedly warned that Kyiv, whose main supplier of air defence systems against ballistic missiles is the United States, will face a deficit of missiles while Washington is focused on the US-Israeli war on Iran.