Aug 6 (Reuters) – Russia launched a nightly multi-wave attack on Ukraine with 70 air assault weapons, including cruise and hypersonic missiles, as well as Iranian-made drones, the Kiev Air Force said on Sunday, and at least 10 missiles appear to have been hit. through air defenses.
Local media said a worker at a grain silo was wounded in the overnight attack, which appeared to be focused on an area of western Ukraine, far from the front line.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said people were killed and wounded in an earlier attack on a blood transfusion center in the city of Kupiansk, a rail hub less than 10 miles from the front lines in the eastern Kharkiv region.
Rescue teams were extinguishing a fire at the site, he said late Saturday, describing the strike as a “war crime.” He did not say how many casualties there were.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians in a large-scale invasion that has killed thousands, uprooted millions and destroyed cities.
Ukraine’s air defense destroyed 30 of the 40 cruise missiles and 27 Shahed drones that Russia launched overnight, the Air Force said, which falls on a holiday on Sunday, on the Telegram messaging channel.
He also said that Russia launched three Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, but did not disclose more information about them.
“In total, in several waves of attacks, from the afternoon of August 5 to the morning of August 6, 2023, the enemy used 70 means of air assault weapons,” the Air Force said. “The information about Kinzhals is classified,” the Ukrainian military said.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
It was not clear what happened to the 10 cruise missiles that were not shot down.
The deputy governor of the Khmelnytskyi region in western Ukraine, Serhiy Tiurin, said a military airfield in Starokostiantyniv was among the targets.
“The Starokonstiantyniv airfield is in the enemy’s mind. There were a series of explosions in the communities of Starokonstiantyniv and Khmelnytskyi,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
“Most of the missiles were shot down by the air defense forces.”
Tiurin said the explosions had damaged several houses, a communal cultural institution and the bus station, and that a fire had broken out in a grain silo.
Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told the Ukrainian national broadcaster that one of the key targets of Russia’s night attack was the Khmelnytskyi region.
“Now, it is the Starokostiantyniv airfield that is pursuing the enemy,” Ihnat said.
Russia had earlier targeted the Starokostiantyniv military airfield in the Khmelnytskyi region. at the end of July.
Ukraine has been in a grueling counter-offensive for two months to try to drive out Russian forces occupying almost a fifth of its territory in the south and east.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on July 26 that while Ukraine had recaptured half of the territory Russia had initially occupied, the Ukrainian counteroffensive was in its infancy and would take shape over “several months.” .
Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Warsaw; Edited by Tom Hogue and Philippa Fletcher
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