Russia unleashed a massive daytime drone attack on Ukraine on Wednesday, targeting critical infrastructure in the country’s west, killing at least six people and prompting NATO member Poland to scramble fighter jets, officials said.
Hungary, now led by a government more aligned with the European mainstream, condemned the strikes on areas of Ukraine with ethnic Hungarian communities and summoned the Russian ambassador. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the Hungarian move as an “important message.”
Writing on Telegram while attending a security conference in Romania, Zelensky said the Russian assault continued into the evening, with Moscow also deploying missiles.
He earlier said Russia had launched at least 800 drones since midnight, deliberately targeting regions near NATO borders.
“It certainly cannot be called a coincidence that one of the longest massive Russian attacks against Ukraine takes place precisely at the time when the President of the United States arrived for a visit to China,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
Zelensky said six people were killed and dozens injured in the attacks, which hit several regions. Ukraine’s railway infrastructure was struck 23 times during the barrage, a presidential adviser said, though rail traffic continued operating.
A late-night statement from Ukraine’s military said 187 combat clashes were recorded over 24 hours along the 1,200-km front line, while Russian forces carried out 55 air strikes and launched 178 guided bombs.
The heaviest fighting was reported near Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, where 24 clashes took place, and near Huliaipole in the south, where Russian forces launched 22 attacks.
Wednesday’s drone assault marked the first major strike since a three-day US-brokered ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia ended on Monday.
Poland scrambled fighter jets as a precautionary measure in response to the Russian strikes, the Polish military said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar, speaking after the new government’s first cabinet meeting, said the Russian ambassador had been summoned to the foreign ministry on Thursday morning for talks with Foreign Minister Anita Orban.
Magyar said Orban would condemn the attacks during the meeting and ask when Russia intended to end the war, now in its fifth year. Under Hungary’s previous government, voted out earlier this month, Budapest had blocked aid for Ukraine and slowed Kyiv’s efforts to join the European Union.
Slovakia also closed border crossings with Ukraine for security reasons.
Moldova’s defense ministry, which has repeatedly denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said a drone crossed into Moldovan airspace and flew nearly 300 km before disappearing from radar. The foreign ministry said the intrusion “posed a threat to our citizens.”
Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency said the drone assault was designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses ahead of further missile strikes. It said Moscow targeted critical infrastructure and essential services in major cities.
Attacks in western Ukraine
Ukraine’s air force said Russia used the territories of Belarus and Moldova to route drones toward Ukraine.
State-owned energy company Naftogaz said Russian strikes damaged two of its facilities — one in the northeastern Kharkiv region and another in the Zhytomyr region west of Kyiv. Governors and mayors also reported strikes across western Ukraine.
Three people were killed and six wounded in the northwestern Rivne region. A strike on critical infrastructure in Zhovkva left the western town without electricity. Local officials also reported a strike on a residential building in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk.
The governor of Ukraine’s far-west Zakarpattia region described the attack as the heaviest there since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, said the barrage demonstrated Russia’s evolving drone tactics. He said drones flew between 5 km and 10 km from the Belarus border in an effort to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and penetrate deeper into western regions.
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