Russia Bombards Ukraine With One of Largest Air Assaults of the War

Russia targeted Ukraine overnight with one of its largest drone and missile barrages of the war, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens in hourslong attacks on cities and villages across the country, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.

It was the second large-scale attack in two nights, part of a broader escalation by Russia in recent months that has brought a spike in civilian casualties amid cease-fire negotiations. Ukraine has also stepped up its own air attacks on Russian territory, though on a smaller scale and with far fewer civilian deaths.

The overnight strikes further underscored how months of diplomacy aimed at brokering a cease-fire have failed to yield a breakthrough. After threatening for weeks to walk away from the negotiations given a lack of progress, President Trump now appears to be doing exactly that, telling Mr. Zelensky last week that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution to the war themselves.

Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia had launched 69 ballistic and cruise missiles along with 298 attack drones, adding that about two-thirds of the missiles and nearly all the drones were shot down. The Air Force spokesman, Yuriy Ihnat, said in an interview that it was the largest bombardment of the war in terms of the number of weapons used. Those numbers could not be independently verified.

Images and videos released by Ukraine’s emergency services captured the scale of the devastation on Sunday morning.

They showed firefighters spraying water on an apartment building in the southern city of Mykolaiv whose roof had been smashed, its shattered beams jutting into the sky like broken ribs. In the Kyiv region, emergency workers walked down a street where the houses on both sides were consumed by fire and debris covered the pavement. In the western Zhytomyr region, photos showed rescuers pulling the bodies of three children from houses that had been reduced to rubble.