Russia launches biggest aerial attack on Ukraine since start of the war

Russia launched its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine overnight, a Ukrainian official said on Sunday, part of an escalating bombing campaign that has further dashed hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the three-year-old war.

Russia fired a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said.

Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, probably having been electronically jammed.

Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine’s air force, told the Associated Press that the overnight onslaught was “the most massive air strike” on the country, taking into account both drones and various types of missiles.

The attack targeted regions across Ukraine, including western Ukraine, far from the frontline.

Poland and allied countries scrambled aircraft to ensure the safety of Polish airspace, the Polish air force said Sunday.

Three people were killed in each of the drone strikes in the Kherson, Kharkiv and the Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to three governors.

Another person was killed by an airstrike in Kostyantynivka, local officials said.

In addition to aerial attacks, a man died when Russian troops shelled the city of Kherson, and the body of a 70-year-old woman was found under the rubble of a nine-story building hit by Russian shelling in the Zaporizhzhia region.

In the Lviv region in the far west of Ukraine, a fire broke out at an industrial facility in the city of Drohobych after a drone attack, which also forced parts of the city to lose power.

Ukraine’s air force also said one of the F-16 warplanes Ukraine received from its western partners to help fight Russia’s invasion crashed after sustaining damage while shooting down air targets. The pilot died when the fighter jet went down.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow is ready for a fresh round of direct peace talks in Istanbul, however the war shows no signs of abating as US-led international peace efforts have so far produced no breakthrough.

Two recent rounds of talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul were brief and yielded no progress on reaching a settlement.

Long-range drone strikes have been a hallmark of the war, now in its fourth year.

The race by both sides to develop increasingly sophisticated and deadlier drones has turned the conflict into a testing ground for new weaponry.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree to withdraw Ukraine from the Ottawa Convention banning antipersonnel land mines, a Ukrainian MP said on Sunday.

The move follows similar recent steps by the Baltic states and Poland.

The 1997 treaty prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel land mines in an effort to protect civilians from explosives that can maim or kill long after fighting ends.

“This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded,” said Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliamentary committee on national security, defence and intelligence.

He noted that Russia is not a party to the convention “and is massively using mines against our military and civilians”.