KYIV/MOSCOW: A daytime Russian drone barrage mainly targeting western Ukraine killed at least six people and wounded dozens, the Ukrainian president said on Wednesday, in what appeared to be a pivot in Moscow’s aerial bombardment strategy.
“Since midnight, at least 800 Russian drones have already been launched,” Zelensky said on social media, adding that “six people have been killed” and dozens were injured, including children.
Journalists in Kyiv saw residents sheltering in metro stations and heard air raid sirens ring out as the capital’s mayor said air defence systems were operating against drones.
Zelensky accused Moscow of deliberately striking on the day of US President Donald Trump’s visit to China.
Putin replaces governors of two border regions
“It certainly cannot be called a coincidence that one of the longest massive Russian attacks against Ukraine takes place precisely at the time when the President of the United States arrived for a visit to China,” he wrote.
“In this difficult geopolitical moment, Russia is clearly trying to disrupt the overall political atmosphere and draw attention to its evil — seeking to do so at the expense of Ukrainian lives and Ukrainian infrastructure.”
In the western Ukrainian region of Rivne, authorities said three people had been killed and four wounded in drone attacks that also damaged civilian infrastructure and a residential building. One person was killed in the Zaporizhzhia region and two others in the southern Kherson region. At least eight people were wounded in the southern Black Sea region of Odesa and the central regions of Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy.
Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence said the drone assault was designed to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences, warning of subsequent missile strikes. It said the attack could be prolonged.
Poland scrambled fighter jets as a preventative measure due to the Russian air strikes on Ukraine, the Polish army said.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Peter Magyar said his government “condemned in the strongest possible terms” the Russian attacks, which affected areas close to his country’s border where a Hungarian-speaking minority lives.
He announced that Russia’s ambassador to Hungary would be summoned to the foreign ministry on Thursday morning.
Governors replaced
Russian President Vladimir Putin replaced the governors of two regions bordering Ukraine hit by Kyiv’s retaliatory attacks — Bryansk and Belgorod — on Wednesday, the Kremlin said. The two governors — Alexander Bogomaz and Vyacheslav Gladkov — led the regions throughout Moscow’s Ukraine offensive. Putin appointed an army general who fought in Ukraine, Alexander Shuvayev, as interim head of the Belgorod region and Yegor Kovalchuk as interim leader of the neighbouring Bryansk region.
Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2026