Russia fires 375 drones and missiles at Ukraine, hitting power plants and a Kharkiv hospital

Russia carried out a sweeping, multi-wave attack on Ukraine’s energy system overnight into Tuesday, knocking out power across large parts of the country a week before US-brokered peace talks are due to resume, Reuters reported.

The attack

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched 289 drones, 17 ballistic missiles and 59 cruise missiles at power plants and substations from Odesa in the south to Rivne in the west.
• Private energy company DTEK said three of its five thermal power plants were knocked offline; outages hit Kyiv and at least six other regions. More than 180,000 people in the Zhytomyr region were without power on Tuesday morning, the governor said.
• Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said railways were also hit, damaging carriages, locomotives and a station.
• In Kharkiv, a city clinical hospital was struck; Zelenskyy said 73 people were injured and the cardiology ward was damaged. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said more than 1,000 windows were shattered.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it targeted energy facilities that it claimed supplied the Ukrainian army and military plants.

Aid site death toll rises

Rescuers kept searching the ruins of a school used as an aid distribution point in Komyshuvakha, Zaporizhzhia region, hit on Monday. At least 31 people were killed and almost 50 were still missing, AP and regional officials reported.

Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone attack set fire to a major oil refinery in Yaroslavl overnight; Moscow’s mayor said nearly 500 drones heading for the capital region were downed.