(OSV News) ─ An overnight July 30 onslaught of Russian missiles and drones struck Ukraine, leaving eight people, including several children, dead and dozens wounded in the aftermath.
In a statement posted on his official Telegram channel on July 30, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched more than 70 missiles and over 280 drone strikes across the country.
He also said a missile struck a residential building in Radushne, located in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing "parents and three children." Rescuers, he noted, were able to pull two children from the rubble.
"Across the country as a whole, as of now, eight people are known to have died," Zelenskyy said. "My condolences to their families and loved ones. Dozens of people are injured; all are receiving the necessary medical assistance. All necessary services are engaged."
In a message released several days before the attack, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, condemned similar strikes by Russia, including a July 19 attack that struck a residential neighborhood.
"It is telling that yet another crime against international law has been committed ─ cluster munitions were used, deliberately aimed at killing the civilian population," he said in the video message published July 26.
The Ukrainian president took to his X account to lament the killing of an entire family, who he identified as "the Voronov family: mother Olena, father Artem, seven children ─ Mark, Dominika, Zakharii, Azarii Ilai, Federica, Emilia, and Viorika ─ and one-and-a-half-year-old grandson Artem, the child of their eldest son, who is now defending Ukraine."
Zelenskyy said the "Russian missile struck with such force that almost nothing was left of the house" and forensic examinations of fragments of human remains established their identities.
"The fate of Zakharii, Dominika, Viorika, Federica, and Artem is still being determined," he said. "It is a horrific crime of Russia's war against Ukraine -- against ordinary people, against ordinary life."
The president also appealed for Patriot missiles in order to defend the Ukrainian people from such attacks. The Russian missile strike, BBC News said, came one day after Zelenskyy met with U.S. President Donald Trump to request U.S. licenses to produce Patriot interceptors, which are designed to target ballistic missiles.
"When we say that Ukraine needs missiles for Patriots, when we seek the capabilities to defend ourselves against Russian ballistic missiles, this isn't about abstractions," he said. "We are talking about families like this, people like these, who can live if we have the means to shoot down Russian missiles -- if our partners help us with interceptors."
The aerial assault targeted 10 regions: Kyiv and its surrounding area, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, and Ivano-Frankivsk. Dozens of ordinary homes, civilian businesses, and infrastructure facilities were damaged or destroyed, and dozens of people sustained injuries, Zelenskyy said.
Nevertheless, the Ukrainian president said the country's air force was able to destroy over 260 drones and a significant number of cruise missiles.
"Under conditions where air defense missiles from partners are critically lacking, our warriors are doing simply unreal things, demonstrating a very high level of professionalism," Zelenskyy said. "This is extraordinary expertise that saves lives when the supply of missiles for air defense systems does not happen or is delayed."
According to BBC News, Poland's military scrambled a fighter jet after several objects were seen close to Polish airspace.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said one object that crashed in a field in the village of Tarnawa Kolonia, which is located roughly 62 miles from the border with Ukraine, was most likely a Russian missile.
"All the indications are that it was a Russian Kh-101 ballistic missile, but we want to be 100% certain about the type of missile and who launched it," Tusk said.
Tusk was in contact with several European leaders regarding the crash, as the entry of Russian missiles into Poland could be viewed as a violation of NATO airspace, BBC News reported.
Major Archbishop Shevchuk also recalled in his video message the July 17-21 visit of Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Vatican secretary for relations with states and international organizations.
The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church thanked Archbishop Gallagher for his support and expressed hope that the Vatican official returned to Rome "as a voice and witness of heroic Ukraine."
He also thanked American theologian and author George Weigel, who published a recent commentary on "First Things" in which he said that Russian aggression against Ukraine was beyond the definition of a war.
"This is not war. It is terrorism," Weigel wrote. "Its aim is to destroy national morale," Weigel wrote in his July 22 column.
"George Weigel notes that the goal of this terrorism is to destroy the very morale of the nation and break its spirit," Major Archbishop Shevchuk said. "But he observes that Russia's aggressive campaign is suffering a major fiasco in Ukraine, just as Hitler's Blitz against London did," echoing Weigel's predictions that Moscow's campaign will ultimately fail.
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Junno Arocho Esteves is an international correspondent for OSV News. Follow him on X @jae_journalist.
