Despite United President Donald Trump’s efforts to resolve the conflicts between both nations, the Russian military launched ballistic missiles into Ukraine, destroying several infrastructure targets in the country.
Russia’s offensive attack comes hours after Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced he was ready to strike a peace deal with Trump, to end the three-year-old invasion.
According to the Ukraine Air Force, Russia launched 181 strike drones and three missiles into the country during the latest attack.
The Ukrainian defense disclosed that it shot down 115 drones, while 55 others lost their location without causing damage.
However, authorities in the southern port city of Odesa reported a “massive” strike, with at least one person killed by drone shrapnel and parts of the city cut off from utilities.
“As a result of the attack in Odesa, critical infrastructure has been damaged and part of the city has been left without electricity, water, and heat,” the city’s military administration said.
“Private houses in the suburbs of Odessa were damaged by debris from downed enemy drones,” the statement said. Fires broke out and a missile hit “an empty sanatorium,” it added.
A top aide to Zelenskky, Andriy Yermak, who condemned the barrage on Wednesday, demanded an immediate end to Moscow’s attack as a condition for a peace deal to end the recurring attack.
” Russia must stop the daily shelling of Ukraine immediately if it truly wants the war to end,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the former Russian president and prime minister now serving as the deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, wrote on social media that “inflicting maximum defeat on the enemy” remains Moscow’s “main task.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces “hit the infrastructure of military airfields, an oil depot providing fuel to Ukrainian military units, production workshops and control points for unmanned aerial vehicles.
Aside that, the ministry revealed it shot down eight Ukrainian drones over its territory overnight.
Russian barrage coincided with President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, in which he said a potential peace between the two nations would be “beautiful.” The strikes began before U.S president entered Congress and continued into the morning, indicated by Ukrainian air force alerts.
During his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, Trump said he received a letter from Zelenskyy, reading part of it aloud and suggesting that tensions between the two camps had cooled.
