Six people were killed in multiple Ukrainian regions as Russia launched over 620 drones and long-range missiles overnight, Ukraine said on Saturday.
"Russians continue to use their specific tactics of terror against our country, striking concentrated blows at one city or another, at one region or another," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening address on Saturday. The attack involved 26 cruise missiles and 597 attack drones, over half of which were Iranian-made Shaheed kamikaze drones, according to Zelenskiy. Ukrainian Air Forces downed 319 Shaheed drones and 25 missiles.
Two people were killed and 20 wounded in the southwestern Chernivtsi region. Two more fatalities happened in northeastern Sumy region and two more people were killed in two dead in Dnipropetrovsk region. Zelenskiy said that some of the drones launched by Russia had been “simulators” aimed at “overloading the air-defence system and making it more difficult to shoot down the suicide drones”, describing the move as a “deliberate and despicable terror.”
The Russian defence ministry said it targeted Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities in Lviv, Kharkiv, and Lutsk, as well as a military air field. Russia has intensified its large-scale missile and drone attacks across Ukraine. In response, Ukraine has been seeking to receive more Western air defence systems to protect its skies from Russia. Zelenskiy said in his video address that Kyiv was close to reaching a multi-level agreement on new US Patriot systems and missiles for them. The Ukrainian leader pledged for more Western support in the war with Russia, stating that Kyiv needed “more than just signals” to stop the war that started in February 2022. “The pace of Russian airstrikes requires swift decisions and it can be curbed right now through sanctions,” Zelenskiy posted on social media. It should be noted that earlier, Donald Trump said the US would send more Patritot systems to Ukraine.
