Russia attacked Ukraine overnight with 270 drones, as well as missiles, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday, hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders held talks with President Trump aimed at finding a path toward a peace deal.
The Russian attacks targeted energy and transport infrastructure in the industrial city of Kremenchuk in central Ukraine’s Poltava region, where dozens of explosions were heard, according to the city’s mayor, Vitalii Maletsky. He said that more than 1,400 residences and more than 100 businesses had been left without power as a result.
There were no immediate reports of fatalities from the attacks, which came a day after Ukrainian authorities said that 14 people had been killed and dozens injured in Russian attacks on large Ukrainian cities and villages near the front line.
Before this week’s strikes, Russia appeared to have scaled back its air attacks on Ukraine, in what Ukrainian officials and analysts described as an attempt by the Kremlin to curry favor with Mr. Trump amid peace efforts.
But Mr. Maletsky said on social media that the attacks showed that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “wants to destroy Ukraine.”
The attacks showed the importance of securing peace with robust security guarantees, said Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister.
“This once again demonstrates how critical it is to end the killing,” Mr. Sybiha said on X.
Russia also struck the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine, causing power cuts and damage to infrastructure, Viacheslav Chaus, the head of the regional military administration, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia’s Defense Ministry rarely comments directly on strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine, but on Tuesday it said in a statement on social media that its military had conducted a strike with long-range weapons overnight against an oil refinery that was supplying fuel to Ukrainian forces fighting in the contested Donbas region. It did not specify where the strike was.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
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