Russia Bombards Ukraine, Killing at Least 2

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Russia Bombards Ukraine, ******** at Least 2

Russia launched a fresh wave of pre-dawn missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and several other large Ukrainian cities on Tuesday, the second day of a deadly, far-reaching ******** campaign that comes as Moscow fights to fend off a Ukrainian offensive on Russian soil.

The early-morning barrage hit a hotel in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih,

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and wounding several others, according to the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lysak, who posted photographs showing the ruins of the hotel. The local authorities said two people also were ******* in the city of Zaporizhzhia and that debris from downed missiles or drones sparked small fires in the capital, Kyiv.

Despite the bombardments of the last two days, President Volodymyr Zelensky said at a forum in Kyiv that he would press ahead with a diplomatic strategy to start talks.

Russia has over the past year fired large volleys roughly once a month in attempts to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defense systems with drones and missiles launched from multiple directions.

Many areas close to the front lines in Ukraine come under daily ******** from Russian forces. But this week’s strikes have revived a broader sense of ***** among civilians in ******* cities as air raid sirens blare, and drones and missiles tear into hotels and residential buildings. Attacks on energy infrastructure have disrupted water and power supplies, deepening the hardships of war.

“It was hard yesterday,” said Samir Mamedov, 33, a Kyiv resident who works in business development. “We were running to the shelter because it was a big ********.”

But he added that people in his circle were now accustomed to the conflict. “Last year we thought that the war would be finished soon, but everyone is getting used to the idea that this war is not going to end,” he said.

The barrage that began on Monday comes at a tumultuous moment, just three weeks after Ukraine launched an incursion into the Kursk region of southern Russia.

At a forum featuring military and government leaders on Tuesday, just hours after the attacks, Mr. Zelensky ***** out looming challenges for Ukraine and what he described as a four-pronged strategy of diplomacy and military efforts to bring Russia to the negotiating table.

The diplomatic track is aimed at enlisting the broadest support possible among nations for Ukraine’s negotiating positions before a planned summit in November, to which Russian representatives will be invited, Mr. Zelensky said. Ukraine is also seeking security guarantees from allies including a request to join NATO.

Militarily, Mr. Zelensky said, Kyiv has taken the initiative with an incursion into Russian territory. As a fourth point, he cited economic measures without elaborating.

Mr. Zelensky said he would present that plan to President Biden at a meeting in September. He also invited the Democratic and *********** Party nominees, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, to review the strategy.

Still, he said, for now there were no indications that President Vladimir V. ****** of Russia intended to end the war through negotiations, and pointed to the missile barrage that hit Ukraine this week as a sign Russia does not want talks. Mr. ******’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, had said on Monday that, after the Ukrainian ******* into Russia, the topic of talks had “lost its relevance.”

Mr. Zelensky conceded that the incursion into Kursk had not caused Russia to withdraw forces now fighting in eastern Ukraine and move them to the defense of Kursk. Russian troops are approaching the outskirts of the city of Pokrovsk, where residents were packing and evacuating on Tuesday.

“This operation did unveil certain matters, political as well,” Mr. Zelensky said of Ukraine’s surprise ******* into Russia. “It started showing the Russian public it is more important for ****** to grab a town they’ve never heard about somewhere in Ukraine than to defend his own territory,” he said. “It gradually opened many eyes.”

Analysts have suggested a different possibility: that the incursion could have a rally-around-the-flag effect for Russians.

Mr. Zelensky, who since the invasion in 2022 has continually pressed for more weaponry and latitude to use it to strike inside Russia, floated new suggestions, some seemingly aspirational, to bring more military might to bear.

He said retired Western F-16 pilots could potentially volunteer to fly Ukraine’s newly acquired jets, for which the country has too few trained pilots. And he has asked, he said, for Poland to donate to Ukraine its legacy MiG fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots can fly. “Give us your MiGs,” he said he had told Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk.

The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, speaking at the same forum in Kyiv as Mr. Zelensky, said that Ukraine has taken control of 100 settlements in Kursk. The Russian authorities have repeatedly insisted the situation was under control and that its forces were repulsing the *******. The claims could not be confirmed independently.

Mr. ****** had promised a decisive response, and his spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated that message on Monday, saying that Russia would inflict “an appropriate response.”

It was unclear whether the attacks this week constituted that retaliation.

Mr. Zelensky vowed on Tuesday to “pay Russia back” for the strikes. “******* against humanity cannot be committed with impunity,” Mr. Zelensky said in a

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Since the incursion into Russia began, Ukrainian troops have gone beyond Kursk to the neighboring region of Belgorod. On Tuesday, the regional governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said Ukrainian forces had launched 23 drones and dozens of munitions at towns and villages in the area over the past 24 hours.

He also claimed there were reports of Ukrainian troops

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in the region, the Russian state news agency

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, saying that the situation remained “difficult but under control,” without elaborating. That claim could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Russia’s Ministry of Defense or from Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s air force said it had

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five cruise missiles and 60 exploding drones, suggesting that Tuesday’s ******** may have been smaller than the one the previous day, when Russia launched more than 200 drones and missiles. Mr. Zelensky called Monday’s ******* “one of the largest” his country has faced since Russia’s invasion began 30 months ago.

On Tuesday, air alarms went off throughout most of the country. In Kyiv, a loud ********** echoed in the downtown area around dawn. The city’s military administration said that the capital was under a “combined rocket and drone ******* of the ******,” and the authorities later said that falling debris from intercepted missiles or drones had set grass on ***** in two city parks.

Ukraine relies on *******-legacy interceptors, which it had in great numbers before the invasion in 2022, and an array of Western-provided air defenses to ****** down incoming missiles and drones. They include long-range Patriots; the midrange NASAMS; and short-range, shoulder-fired Stingers, intended to prevent missiles from slipping through to hit targets.

Kyiv, though, has been attempting to ramp up its domestic military production to make itself less reliant on supplies from NATO allies.

Mr. Zelensky told journalists on Tuesday that the country’s defense industry had created and tested Ukraine’s first domestically produced ballistic missile. He gave no further details, and the claim could not be independently verified.

The attacks this week came against the backdrop of grinding battles in eastern Ukraine.

One of Ukraine’s aims with the incursion into the Kursk region was to force the Kremlin to divert troops from the front lines in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, where they have been advancing on the city of Pokrovsk, an important transport hub for Ukrainian forces.

But Russia has been pressing on with its offensive in the Donetsk region. General Syrsky said that Russian forces were attempting to cut off a road that runs northeast from the city and is used as a resupply route, adding that Moscow is “increasing its presence on the Pokrovsk front.”

Military analysts have for months argued that Ukrainian military resources are already stretched thin, raising questions about whether it can continue attacking inside Russia while maintaining its defenses in the east.

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