Russian Strikes, Iranian Drones Kill At Least 9 In Ukraine; Zelenskyy Slams ‘Coalition Of Murderers’

Russian forces killed at least nine people and injured dozens of others in a “cynical” overnight missile and drone attack on Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Three other people were killed in Russian strikes elsewhere in Ukraine on June 23, as international efforts to forge some sort of cease-fire between Kyiv and Moscow have gone dormant.

Zelenskyy said the Russian strike, which reportedly included ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea, damaged five apartment buildings in Kyiv and a hospital in neighboring Bila Tserkva.

The strike contained 352 drones — including 159 Iranian-made Shahed drones — and 16 missiles, he said.

“Russian army carried out a completely cynical strike using Russian-Iranian Shahed drones and missiles against civilian infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities and communities of ours,” Zelenskyy wrote on X on June 23.

Ukrainian authorities said the overnight attack on the Kyiv region also injured at least 25 people, including four children, and killed one person in Bila Tserkva.

Two more people were killed and 10 others were injured in a Russian strike on Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, bordering Belarus.

Russians were attacking an apartment building again. Terrorists masquerading as a state,” the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram after the attacks.

Separately, three people were killed and at least 14 injured in a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian military training area in the Kherson region on June 22, the latest in a series of such attacks on training grounds by the Kremlin’s forces.

The news service of Ukraine’s ground forces said classes with military personnel were under way when the attack on the temporary training facility occurred, most likely by a Russian Iskander ballistic missile.

The statement did not specify if the casualties were all soldiers or other personnel.

“Thanks to timely safety measures, numerous losses of personnel were avoided when receiving an air raid alarm. However, unfortunately, there are dead and wounded,” the statement by the ground forces command said.

Vitaliy Sarantsev, a spokesman for the ground forces, was quoted by Ukrainian public media as saying, “unfortunately, there were some military personnel who neglected security measures — most of them were injured.”

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that some 70 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the attack, which it said targeted a Ukrainian military training ground.

The reports could not be independently verified.

The attack was the latest in a string of similar incidents throughout this month.

On June 4, Russian forces launched a missile attack on a training ground in the Poltava region, injuring three. That attack followed another Russian strike on a Ukrainian military training ground on June 1, killing 12 and injuring more than 60./rferl/