Russia Unleashes Missile Barrage on Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) -- Russian forces unleashed a barrage of missiles on regions across Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday morning, killing civilians and damaging civilian infrastructure.

The barrage came just hours before top Russian military officials and their counterparts from Asia, the Middle East and Africa gathered outside Moscow for a security conference, where the fighting in Ukraine is likely to dominate the agenda. Moscow's war in Ukraine is nearing the 18-month mark.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia fired a total of 28 cruise missiles at the country. Sixteen of them were intercepted, the statement said.

"Deliberate large-scale attacks on civilians. Solely for the sake of killing and psychological pressure," presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on X, formerly known as Twitter. Podolyak added that the barrage was "an undeniable manifestation" of Russia's "terrorist activity, legally documented by numerous destructions and victims."

In the western region of Lviv, on the border with Poland, residential buildings and other civilian structures were damaged by missile debris, local officials said. Ten people were wounded in two villages outside the city of Lviv.

In the nearby region of Volyn, three people were killed by a Russian missile strike and three others were injured, according to Oleksii Kuleba, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office. In the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, two people were injured in the region's capital.

Parts of the city of Smila in the central Cherkasy region were left without access to water after the Russian strikes. The attack damaged a medical facility, as well as water and heat supply networks.

In one of the villages of the front-line Zaporizhzhia region, a missile struck a stadium at a school, damaging the facility's building as well as residential houses and a kindergarten. Russian forces also hit a grocery warehouse in Kramatorsk, a city in the front-line Donetsk region in the east, killing one person and wounding another.

The countrywide barrage came a day after Russian forces unleashed a wave of missile and drone strikes on the non-frontline region, Odesa, in the country's southwest.

The Kremlin's forces have recently pummeled Odesa, hitting facilities that transport Ukraine's crucial grain exports and also wrecking cherished Ukrainian historical sites. The repeated attacks on Odesa follow Moscow's decision to break off a landmark agreement that had allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and help reduce the threat of hunger.

In Russia on Tuesday, top Russian military officials and their counterparts from Belarus, China, India, Middle Eastern and African nations gathered outside Moscow for a security conference.

Addressing the conference in a pre-recorded video statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again accused the West of fueling the conflict "by pumping billions of dollars" into Kyiv and "supplying it with equipment, weapons, ammunition, sending their military advisers and mercenaries." "Everything is being done to ignite the conflict even more, to draw other states into it," Putin said.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu sought to downplay the significance of the western support for Ukraine, saying in turn that despite all that support, Kyiv's forces "fail to achieve results on the battlefield."