KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a vast missile and drone attack across Ukraine overnight and early Thursday morning, killing at least 18 people and destroying any thought that the temporary Easter truce announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin meant anything more permanent.
The strikes sent plumes of smoke above the capital, Kyiv, in the early morning and also targeted the port city of Odesa and the central-eastern city of Dnipro. Bone-rattling explosions of air-defense interceptors and ballistic missiles hitting their targets jarred residents out of bed.
Russia sent 659 drones and 44 missiles, including 19 ballistic ones, into Ukrainian cities from 7 a.m. Wednesday to 7 a.m. Thursday, according to the Ukrainian air force. It was the largest such barrage in months and one of the largest of the war.
In Kyiv, four people were killed, including a 12-year-old boy, and 48 other people were injured, according to the mayor, Vitali Klitschko. He added on social media at 5 a.m. Kyiv time that Russian strikes had also injured four medics who had been responding to an earlier attack at an office building.
Elsewhere, at least nine people were killed in Odesa, four in the Dnipropetrovsk region and one in Kharkiv, officials said.
Peace negotiations over the war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, have stalled since February, largely because of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
After repeated calls by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine for a ceasefire over Orthodox Easter, Putin announced one last week.
It was the second year in a row that Putin had called for a temporary truce. Both the Ukrainian and Russian sides, as they did last year, accused each other of repeatedly violating the ceasefire, which Putin said would last 32 hours. The reported assaults occurred along the front lines; cities were spared any major attacks.
The intense assault Wednesday night and early Thursday indicated that Russia was again ramping up attacks on civilian targets, including by using ballistic missiles.
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