Large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine leaves at least five dead

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Russia launched drones, missiles and guided aerial bombs over Ukraine early Sunday, killing five people in a massive overnight attack that Ukrainian officials said targeted civilian infrastructure.

Moscow fired 53 ballistic missiles and sent 496 drones, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said nine regions of the country were hit.

Four people, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed in a combined drone and missile attack in Lviv, regional authorities and Ukraine's emergency services reported.

It was the largest air assault against the historic western city and the surrounding region since Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, according to Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the local military administration. At the start of the war, Lviv was considered a refuge from the fighting and destruction spreading further east.

In a Telegram post, Kozytskyi said Russia launched around 140 Shahed drones and 23 ballistic missiles in the region. At least six other people were injured, according to a Ukrainian police statement.

The attack left two districts of Lviv without power and public transportation suspended for several hours early Sunday, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said. He added that a business complex on the outskirts of Lviv was on fire after the attack, describing it as a civilian facility unrelated to the Ukrainian war effort.

One person was also injured in the Ivano-Frankivsk region south of Lviv, according to local governor Svitlana Onyshchuk.

In the southern city of Zaporizhia, an airstrike killed a civilian woman and wounded nine others, including a 16-year-old girl, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said. He said Russia attacked with drones and guided aerial bombs.

Fedorov added that the attack destroyed residential buildings and left some 73,000 homes in Zaporizhia and surrounding areas without electricity.

Separately, six people, including a child, were injured in Sloviansk, a key city in the eastern Donetsk region that remains under Ukrainian control, after a Russian-made guided aerial bomb hit an apartment building, the regional prosecutor's office reported Sunday. Russian airstrikes Saturday night damaged more than two dozen residential buildings in Sloviansk, as well as cars, shops, and a cafe, the prosecutor's office added.

Russia bombs Ukraine's power grid as winter approaches

Zelenskyy reiterated his call on kyiv's Western partners on Sunday to deploy additional air defenses to combat Russia's "air terror."

"Today, the Russians once again targeted our infrastructure, everything that ensures people can live a normal life. We need more protection, swift implementation of all defense agreements, especially on air defense, to render this aerial terror useless," he said in a Telegram post.

Ukraine has been carrying out its own long-range attacks on Russia for months, many of which have targeted Moscow's oil infrastructure and contributed to persistent fuel shortages.

For its part, the Kremlin has stepped up attacks on Ukraine's power grid ahead of winter, as in previous years since the large-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. kyiv describes this as an attempt to use the cold as a weapon by denying civilians heat, electricity, and drinking water.

Serhii Koretskyi, chief executive of Ukraine's state-owned Naftogaz, said Sunday's attack caused further large-scale damage to the gas infrastructure that supplies civilians, just two days after what the company said was the largest Russian attack on its facilities since the full invasion.

Russia's goal was to deprive Ukrainians of gas, heat, and electricity, Koretskyi told Naftogaz. The company did not provide further details on the damage caused by the latest attack.

Moscow has also intensified airstrikes on Ukraine's rail network, which is essential for military transport, hitting it almost daily for the past two months. Russian drones attacked a train station in the northern town of Shostka on Saturday, killing one person and wounding dozens.

Putin warns US about arming kyiv

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped up warnings that any U.S. supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine would seriously damage bilateral relations.

The possible delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States to kyiv will mark a "new qualitative stage of escalation, including in relations between Russia and the United States," Putin said at a forum of international foreign policy experts in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Putin's remarks followed an apparent dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Ukraine, after U.S. President Donald Trump said late last month that he believed Ukraine could regain all the territory it had lost to Russia.

Trump had previously repeatedly called on kyiv to make concessions to end the war, and ended Putin's diplomatic isolation in the West by hosting him at a summit in Alaska on August 15.