Russia says night attack on Ukraine is response to "terrorist acts"

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday (2) that its massive attack on Ukraine overnight was a response to what it called "terrorist acts" against targets inside Russia and said it had hit several Ukrainian military targets.

Ukrainian authorities said Russian drones and missiles bombed the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and other cities in the early hours of Tuesday, killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 100, following days of warnings about Moscow's plans for a major attack.

"Overnight, in response to terrorist acts by the Kiev regime, the armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a massive attack using high-precision, long-range, aircraft-based, land and sea weaponry," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The Kremlin said Moscow used hypersonic missiles and drones to attack seven regions of Ukraine, including Kiev, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv, successfully hitting important sites for the Ukrainian armed forces, such as fuel and transport facilities and military airfields.

The Russian government also warned last week that Russia would begin carrying out "systematic attacks" against targets in Kiev in retaliation for what it called a devastating Ukrainian drone attack on a student dormitory in Luhansk, a Russian-controlled city in eastern Ukraine, that killed 21 people.

Ukraine said it attacked a drone command center in the area, not students. Putin declared on Monday night (1st) that Kiev "opened a new page in a series of crimes" with the attack on the dormitory and a subsequent attack on an apartment building in an area of the Russian-controlled Kherson region of Ukraine.

Both sides deny deliberately attacking civilians.

Understand the war in Ukraine
Russia began a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently holds about a fifth of the neighboring country's territory.

Still in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

The Russians are slowly advancing in the east and Moscow shows no signs of abandoning its main war objectives. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, President of the United States, is pushing for a peace agreement.

Ukraine has carried out increasingly bold attacks inside Russia and says the operations are aimed at destroying essential Russian military infrastructure.

Putin's government, in turn, has intensified air strikes, including drone offensives.

Both sides deny targeting civilians, but thousands have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainians.

It is also believed that thousands of soldiers died on the front line, but neither side releases military casualty figures.

The United States says 1.2 million people were injured or killed in the war.

Source: CNN