Russia Launches Large-Scale Drone Attack, Striking Ryazan Oil Refinery and Kyiv Apartment Block

Russia launched a large-scale long-range drone attack targeting several regions in Russia, including the huge Ryazan oil refinery, after three days of massive strikes by Moscow against Ukraine.

“A huge wave of Russian strikes overnight targeted Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, killing at least 17 people and injuring dozens of others, according to Ukrainian authorities”

CNN

In Kyiv, a cruise missile hit an apartment block on Thursday, killing 24 people including three children, and emergency teams later finished digging through the rubble of the nine-storey building in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district on the left bank of the Dnipro River.

CNN

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the destroyed apartment block site, placed flowers, and told rescue workers, “Our first responders ... worked non-stop for more than a day,” while he said, “The Russians practically levelled an entire section of the building with their missile.”

The Guardian said the Ukrainian air force described the strike as Russia’s biggest barrage of the country since it launched its all-out invasion in February 2022, and it reported that Kyiv officials said 24 bodies had been recovered and about 30 people had been rescued alive.

The Guardian also reported that the interior ministry said the search-and-rescue operation at the apartment building lasted more than 28 hours and hundreds of rescuers sifted through 3,000 cubic metres of rubble.

As Ukraine announced a national day of mourning, the Council of Europe said it was moving towards setting up a war crimes court to try Russia’s leadership for its war of aggression against Ukraine, with Alain Berset saying, “Action now needs to be taken to follow up on this political commitment by securing the tribunal’s functioning and funding.”

In a separate account of drone warfare’s reach into civilian life, the Washington Post described 12-year-old Anatolii Prokhorenko in Chernihiv hearing “the buzz of a drone,” as civilians were increasingly tracked, chased and attacked by small, commercially available drones.

Hungarian Conservative

NBC News reported that Russia fired at least 800 drones in a massive daytime barrage on about 20 regions of Ukraine on Wednesday, killing at least six people and wounding dozens, including children, and Zelenskyy said the “obvious goal is to overload air defenses.”

NBC News also said Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s new government summoned the Russian ambassador over a drone attack near Hungary’s border, and it quoted Magyar saying, “The Hungarian government strongly condemns the Russian attack on Transcarpathia.”

NBC News added that Zelenskyy cautioned a cruise and ballistic missile attack could follow the drone barrage, while city officials in Kyiv said three people were killed in an attack in Kyiv’s Obolonskyi district and Mayor Vitali Klitschko said emergency services responded to the scene.

The Guardian reported that Zelenskyy reiterated appeals to allies to help Ukraine strengthen its air defences, writing on X, “We are entirely justified in our responses against Russia’s oil industry, military production, and those directly responsible for committing war crimes against Ukraine and Ukrainians.”

“Ucraina, raid russi su Kiev: 24 morti”

Il Sole 24 ORE

In the same reporting, the Council of Europe’s push for a war crimes court was framed as a political commitment requiring “securing the tribunal’s functioning and funding,” with Alain Berset saying it was needed to follow up on the summit of 46 European foreign ministers in Moldova.

NBC News said Zelenskyy vowed to keep pressure on Moscow to make concessions in talks, and it quoted him saying, “We’re not giving up on diplomatic efforts, and we hope that pressure on Russia, together with negotiations in different formats, will help bring peace.”

NBC News also reported that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow’s terms were unchanged, with Putin insisting that Ukraine pull its troops from the four regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022.

In the Washington Post’s account of drone warfare, it described a soldier teaching 12-year-old Anatolii Prokhorenko how to disable the fiber-optic drones that Russia has been using to hunt Ukrainian civilians in a campaign the U.N. has labeled a war crime.