Russian missile strike on Ukraine military college kills 41, Zelenskyy says

(LONDON) — Russian missiles and drones again crisscrossed Ukrainian skies on Monday night in strikes that killed at least 44 people; 41 of whom died in an attack on a military college in Poltava.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the strike on his official Telegram channel on Tuesday morning. According to “preliminary reports,” the president said, two ballistic missiles struck the Poltava Military Communications Institute and a nearby hospital, killing at least 41 people and injuring more than 180.

“I have ordered a full and prompt investigation into all the circumstances of what happened,” Zelenskyy said.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram that 25 people have so far been rescued at the attack site, 11 of whom were pulled from under rubble.

In total, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram that Russia fired three Iskander ballistic missiles from occupied Crimea, one Kh-59/69 air-launched missile from Russia’s western Kursk region and 35 Iranian-made Shahed attack drones from two areas in Kursk and Crimea.

Ukrainian air defenses downed 27 drones, the air force said, with six more “lost.”

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said that two people — a 38-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son — were killed in a strike on a hotel complex in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Two other members of the family — the father and a 13-year-old girl — were buried under rubble but later recovered. Both are in a “serious condition” and have been hospitalized, the ministry said.

Further north, in the city of Dnipro, one person was killed and at least six injured by a Russian missile attack, the Interior Ministry wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine’s air defense units were active overnight in Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Poltava and the Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the air force said.

Russia’s intensifying long-range attacks on Ukrainian military, infrastructure and civilian targets have prompted Kyiv to push its Western partners — chief among them the U.S. — for permission to use Western weapons against airfields and launch sites within Russian borders.

Ukraine has scored notable successes within Russia with its own domestically produced drones and missiles, but Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Kyiv needs more advanced capabilities.

“The terrorist state must feel what war is,” the president said on Sunday. “To force Russia into peace, to move them from deceitful rhetoric about negotiations to taking steps to end the war, to clear our land of occupation and occupiers, we need effective tools.”

Following a deadly Russian guided bomb strike on the city of Kharkiv last week, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address that such attacks can only be stopped “by striking Russian military airfields, their bases, and the logistics of Russian terror.”

“We talk about this every day with our partners,” he said. “We persuade. We present arguments.” 

Curtailing Russia’s ability to strike from the air, Zelenskyy added, would be “a strong step to force Russia to seek an end to the war and a just peace.”