At least one person has been killed and 22 others were wounded in a Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine, officials said, as Moscow launched its largest attack on its neighbour in weeks amid an ongoing diplomatic push for a ceasefire.
Russian forces launched 574 drones and 40 missiles overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force said on Thursday, adding that its air defence units had downed most of the attacks. But a number of the attacks struck targets in several locations across Ukraine, resulting in casualties and damage to buildings.
In the western city of Lviv, about 70km (43 miles) from the border with Poland, a drone and missile attack killed one person, injured three and damaged 26 residential buildings, Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said.
In Mukachevo, near the border with Hungary and Slovakia, 15 people were wounded in a Russian attack, local authorities said.
The strike on the town also destroyed storage facilities at a US electronics manufacturer, the Reuters news agency reported. Television footage showed the building at the plant, which regional Governor Myroslav Biletskyi said produced consumer electronics, engulfed in smoke, the agency reported.
In a post on X, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said the plant was a “fully civilian facility that has nothing to do with defense or the military”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack, saying it was carried out “as if nothing were changing at all”.
Moscow has shown no signs of pursuing meaningful negotiations to end the war, he said, urging the international community to respond with stronger pressure on Russia, including tougher sanctions and tariffs.
Russia “wasted several cruise missiles against an American business,” he said, noting that it was a regular civilian enterprise producing domestic utilities, such as coffee machines. “And that too became a target for Russia. Very telling.”
Russian drones and missiles also hit the northwestern city of Lutsk, Mayor Ihor Polishchuk said, but there were no reported casualties, according to the AFP news agency.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that it had destroyed 49 Ukrainian drones at various locations. It did not say whether the attacks had caused any casualties or damage.
Poland’s military said on Thursday that it had scrambled aircraft to protect its airspace in response to the Russian assault on its neighbour.
Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford said the deluge of drones and missiles was “a sign that Russia is not interested … in this effort to at least begin meaningful talks towards ending the war”.
Push for ceasefire
The latest exchange of fire between Moscow and Kyiv follows a renewed diplomatic push to end the war led by United States President Donald Trump.
On Friday, Trump hosted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at a summit in Alaska in a bid to strike a ceasefire deal, but no agreement was reached.
He then held a meeting on Monday at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and key European leaders on the situation, assuring Ukraine that Washington would provide it with “very good protection” if a deal is reached to end the war.
But the meeting left many issues unresolved, with a Ukrainian military analyst saying he was sceptical about the outcome.
“No decision has been made from the viewpoint of security guarantees [for Ukraine], the supply of arms and [the deployment of Western] troops,” Ihor Romanenko, the former deputy head of Ukraine’s army, told Al Jazeera.
Earlier, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would hold intensive meetings to understand the kind of security guarantees its allies are willing to provide.
The details are being hammered out among national security advisers and military officials in the coming days, Zelenskyy told reporters. He then expects to be ready to hold direct talks with Putin for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The talks could also be conducted in a trilateral format alongside Trump, Zelenskyy said.
“We want to have an understanding of the security guarantees architecture within seven to 10 days. And based on that understanding, we aim to hold a trilateral meeting. That was my logic,” Zelenskyy told reporters on Wednesday after his trip to Washington, DC.
“President Trump suggested a slightly different logic: a trilateral meeting through a bilateral one,” Zelenskyy said. “But then we all agreed that, in any case, we continue working on the security guarantees, establishing this approximate framework, similar to Article 5. And what we have today is political support for this.”
Article 5 is NATO’s common defence guarantee under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on them all.
Al Jazeera’s Stratford said that since Trump’s meetings, there had been no visible progress on arranging a bilateral meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders, and “certainly not in relation to the kind of time frame that … Trump set during that meeting in Washington”.
“[Trump] was talking about wanting a meeting in a couple of weeks,” said Stratford, adding that the US leader had said he had spoken to Putin about meeting with Zelenskyy and that he “was potentially open to it”.
A venue for the meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders is being discussed, with Switzerland, Austria and Turkiye as possibilities, Zelenskyy added. He said that Hungary, which has offered to host talks, would be a “challenging” location.
On Thursday, Hungary reiterated an offer to host peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv.
“If we are needed, we are ready to provide appropriately fair and safe conditions for such peace negotiations,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in a podcast broadcast on Facebook.
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, US Vice President JD Vance said that European countries would have to shoulder the “lion’s share” of guaranteeing Ukraine’s security in the event of a deal to end the war, and that the US should not have to “carry the burden”.
Source: Aljazeera
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