At least 12 people have been killed and 20 injured, including two children, in overnight Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the wider region, officials say.
Six of the casualties were railway workers of the state Ukrzaliznytsia company after a depot was hit in Kyiv.
Russia said its “massive strike using high-precision weapons” targeted Ukraine’s military and energy facilities, and added that one person was also killed in Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s western Belgorod region.
This comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin was urged by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a close ally, to end the war.
“Every day that the war continues, humanity is, in effect, set back a step, whilst every step towards peace gives all of humanity real hope for peace,” Modi was quoted as saying at a security summit in Kyrgyzstan.
Modi, whose country’s economy depends heavily on discounted oil from Moscow, has made several similar pleas to Putin since he launced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Overnight in Kyiv, eight people were killed and fires were reported in three city districts.
Another four people were killed in the nearby town of Boryspil where a residential building was hit.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday morning that nearly 350 rescue workers had been working through the night in Kyiv and the surrounding region after the latest strikes.
In a post on social media, he said Russia had fired a “significant number of jet drones and ballistic missiles”.
The strikes mark the sixth day of sustained Russian drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, in what appears to be a strategy aimed at exhausting Ukrainian air defences and undermining civilian morale.
Russia’s military warned over the weekend that its forces were preparing to carry out “massive” strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities.
Eight other Ukrainian regions were attacked, Zelensky said, adding that an Indian national was among the casualties.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivsky later said the Indian man – who turned 26 on Tuesday – was killed in Boryspil.
The overnight attacks come after 38 people were killed in Russian strikes on a weapons depot in the Kyiv region on Friday, causing shells, mines and drones to detonate.
Separately, a drone attack hit a major Russian Baltic Sea port in Ust-Luga, triggering a fire, Leningrad regional Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said.
Ukraine says targets like Ust-Luga – which handles millions of tons of petroleum products each year – are legitimate as they help finance Moscow’s war effort.
