Live Updates: Russia Unleashes New Strikes as Ukraine Plans Cabinet Shake-Up
Here are the latest developments.
Weary, dust-covered rescuers were searching for bodies on Wednesday among the ruins of a devastating missile strike in eastern Ukraine, as Russia launched another deadly attack in the west that killed seven people in the historic center of the city of Lviv.
The latest Russian onslaught came as President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine planned the broadest shake-up in his cabinet since the war began in 2022. Half a dozen senior figures tendered their resignations, the speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament said, in what Mr. Zelensky described as an effort to bring “a new energy” to his government as Russia steps up its attacks.
The changes come at a precarious moment for Ukraine in the war, with heavy assaults by Russian ground troops near the transit hub of Pokrovsk and a stepped-up campaign of airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities. At the same time, Ukrainian forces are trying to hold on to several hundred square miles of territory they have seized inside western Russia.
Early Wednesday, Russia sent missiles and drones flying toward cities and regions across Ukraine, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens of others in the city of Lviv. The attack, near Ukraine’s western border, prompted neighboring Poland to put its air defenses on alert.
Here are other developments:
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Poltava aftermath: The strikes on Wednesday came a day after a Russian missile attack on a military academy in Poltava, in eastern Ukraine, that officials said had killed 51 people and injured 271 others. On Wednesday, rescuers were continuing to pull debris and bodies from the ruins left by that attack, one of the deadliest in 30 months of full-scale war.
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Bombardment goes on: The Russian military also bombarded the Kherson region, in southern Ukraine, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the head of the regional administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram. The attacks hit high-rise buildings and killed three people, Mr. Prokudin said.
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Cabinet reshuffle: While the upheaval in the Zelensky government was not expected to mean major policy changes at home or abroad, some critics worried that the changes could further concentrate power in the president’s office, depending on who is named to fill vacated posts.
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Prominent diplomat: Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, a familiar face in allied capitals who had helped lead Ukraine’s lobbying for Western weapons to battle the Russian invasion, was the most prominent of the cabinet officials who have offered their resignations. Others include Oleksandr Kamyshin, the minister of strategic industries; Denys Maliuska, the justice minister; and Iryna Vereschuk, the minister for reintegration of temporarily occupied territories.
A cabinet shake-up suggests Zelensky is planning for ‘a new phase of the war,’ analysts say.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s overhaul of his government did not appear to signal fundamental shifts in domestic or foreign policy, analysts said Wednesday. But it comes at a dynamic moment in the war, with Russia stepping up airstrikes and inching forward in eastern Ukraine, and weeks before Mr. Zelensky is expected to travel to the United States, where the outcome of November’s elections could affect Washington’s support for his military.
While a reshuffle had long been in the works — and it is not yet known who will be named to fill vacated posts — making the move now was a recognition by Mr. Zelensky that “Ukraine has to prepare for a new phase of the war and new phase of diplomacy and he would like to see some new managers for these processes,” said Mykhailo Minakov, a senior adviser on Ukraine for the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.
He and other analysts noted that there had been unusual stability to this point in the president’s wartime team. The reshuffle, Mr. Minakov said, had been in the works for months, first discussed at the beginning of the year and again in the spring.
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian leader said the changes would bring “a new energy” to his administration. “These steps are related to strengthening our state in various areas,” he said during a meeting in Kyiv with Prime Minister Simon Harris of Ireland. He declined to comment on where some of the ministers who tendered their resignations might end up in the reshuffle.
“This is Zelensky’s style of work,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst. “When he sees stagnation in the work, he changes people,” he added. “He thinks that new people will be more motivated and will bring new ideas.”
Mr. Zelensky had previously dismissed only a handful of ministers since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Mr. Minakov said. That has created stability but also has led to charges of an insular leadership resistant to change. Mr. Zelensky, for his part, has been criticized for overreach in using his war powers to solidify his political standing.
Some analysts and critics of the administration warned that the cabinet moves could further concentrate the power in the president’s hands if he installs loyalists reluctant to challenge him or the powerful head of the president’s office, Andriy Yermak.
The reshuffle could see “an increase of Yermak’s influence,” said Yevhan Mahda, a Ukrainian political analyst, who added that more authority in the president’s office comes at the expense of the parliament and cabinet ministers, who are subject to parliamentary approval.
Mr. Minakov said he spoke to several lawmakers on Wednesday morning — after the speaker of parliament announced that a half-dozen senior figures had offered their resignations — who had no knowledge of the reshuffle until they read about it in the news media. That underscored the diminished role parliament has played since the outbreak of the full-scale war.
“By law, the cabinet and parliament are as important as the president but in practice we see all the decisions are made by the president’s office,” he said.
The apparent move to replace the foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was the most sensitive given his role in building diplomatic support and helping lead Ukraine’s effort to secure key Western arms.
Mr. Minakov said that policy changes that have been debated in the president’s office for months include a strategic rethinking of the nation’s economic policy, which to this point has been cautious. The recent dismissal of the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Rostyslav Shurma, who was in charge of economic and energy policy, suggests that there may be new approaches to matters related to the stability of the economy.
And analysts said that new ministers could help the government deal with some of its most vexing problems, including corruption. As part of the reshuffle, Mr. Zelensky is expected to announce a new justice minister at the same time as he is shaking up the state body charged with investigating corruption issues, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, known as NABU.
Ukraine’s top diplomat has been a prominent voice in rallying support for his country.
When Russian forces rolled across the border into Ukraine at the start of their full-scale invasion in February 2022, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, compared the assault to Nazi Germany’s in World War II.
“Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one,” Mr. Kuleba tweeted. Then he spelled out the country’s mission: “Stop Putin.”
That remained Mr. Kuleba’s central message for 30 months as he rallied wartime international support for Ukraine, courting allies old and new and becoming one of the most recognizable faces representing Kyiv’s cause.
Mr. Kuleba was the most senior of the cabinet officials who Ukraine’s parliament speaker said had offered to resign on Wednesday. It appeared to be the largest reshuffling of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet since the start of the war, a move Mr. Zelensky described as necessary to “achieve all the results we need.” Mr. Kuleba did not comment publicly on the matter.
As Ukraine’s top diplomat, Mr. Kuleba sought to drum up both military and political support. He was a forceful advocate in the monthslong effort — eventually successful — to convince the United States and Germany to supply Ukraine with the Patriot air-defense system in order to protect against Russian missile attacks.
“Ukraine is currently the only country in the world that is subject to ballistic missile attacks almost every day,” he said during a news briefing in March. “Patriots should be deployed here, in Ukraine, to protect real human lives, and not to remain in places where the missile threat is zero.”
Mr. Kuleba has also been active in advancing Ukraine’s most ambitious diplomatic goals: joining the NATO military alliance and becoming a member of the European Union. Both efforts faced resistance from some allies, who worried that granting membership to Ukraine would provoke the Kremlin to attack even more aggressively.
Mr. Kuleba is a career diplomat who joined Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry after graduating from Taras Shevchenko University in the capital, Kyiv, where he studied international law, according to his official biography. Along with postings to the European Council and a stint as ambassador at large, focusing on online diplomacy, he also briefly headed Ukraine’s foundation for cultural diplomacy.
He was 38 when he was named foreign minister in 2020. Mr. Kuleba was the first Ukrainian foreign minister to visit Africa, and he traveled to China in July.
In 2021, as Russia began moving troops toward its border with Ukraine, officials in Kyiv began sounding alarms about a possible invasion and Mr. Kuleba sought to shore up support in advance of a possible war. That year he visited Washington at least twice, meeting with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken as he worked to repair Ukraine’s relationship after what he described as “a difficult time” for bilateral ties under former President Donald J. Trump, who had been reluctant to take action against Russia.
On Tuesday night, before his resignation offer became public, Mr. Kuleba sat down with CNN for an interview in which his message remained consistent. On Wednesday morning, after the latest deadly attacks by Russia, he said on social media: “I urge all capitals, ministers, international organizations, and others to strongly condemn Russia’s war crime against civilians.”
The Russian strike on Tuesday hit a military academy devoted to electronic warfare.
The Russian strike on a military academy in Poltava in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday highlighted the growing importance of electronic warfare systems in the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
The facility that was hit, the Poltava Institute of Military Communications, offers training in radar and electronic warfare, according to Vladimir Rogov, a Kremlin-appointed occupation official in southern Ukraine.
The exact training regimen at the institute is unknown. But analysts at Janes, the British-based defense intelligence firm, said videos and other promotional information on the institute’s own website showed radio and electronic warfare equipment used for military purposes.
A Ukrainian official also confirmed that the facility was used for this purpose. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military information.
Electronic warfare refers to doing battle with electromagnetic waves, using radio signals to overwhelm communication links with drones and troops, locate targets, disrupt radar and trick guided weapons. While this is not a new form of fighting, swift advances in the technology have created what the Pentagon described in June as “emerging and persistent challenges” from a “continuously evolving electromagnetic interference landscape in Ukraine.”
Just months ago, experts said, Russia held a demonstrated advantage over Ukraine in jamming and spoofing incoming drones and missiles that are directed by radio-frequency and GPS systems. Ukraine and its allies have since stepped up efforts to counter Moscow’s electronic warfare tactics, and this past spring deployed 48 Shatro 50-1M systems to disable or divert Russian drones in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.
The Shatro system, manufactured in Ukraine, disrupts the radio communications of incoming drones within a radius of about 275 yards. The systems were donated by Petro O. Poroshenko, a Ukrainian politician and former president.
“We are launching a new program — trench electronic warfare, which protects the military right at the front line,” Mr. Poroshenko said in a statement at the time. “It directly protects command posts, trenches and units.”
It was just one of a multitude of electronic warfare programs and systems to counter them that Ukraine has fielded in recent months, some made domestically and some donated by the West, Janes analysts said.
But the former chair of NATO’s military committee warned in May that the West was not yet prepared to counter Russia’s prowess in electronic warfare.
In Ukraine, “we’re now seeing the most dense and dangerous electromagnetic operating environment we’ve ever seen,” Stuart Peach, a retired British air chief marshal, said at a conference in Oslo. “Russia never stopped doing E.W., it never stopped continuing to invest. We need to learn from the Ukrainians who are fighting for their lives and their country.”
Maria Varenikova
Reporting from Poltava, Ukraine
We’ve been speaking with people in Poltava, trying to learn more about why the Russian attack on the military academy yesterday had such a high death toll. Ihor Matsiuk, the training center’s director, told me that soldiers and cadets simply had too little time between missile strikes to reach the bomb shelter. “Those who were in the classrooms close to the shelter and managed to get there fast survived,” he said. He said that initial reports of an event that had brought soldiers together in one place were untrue. The missiles hit while lessons were in session and people were in classrooms, he said.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Russia’s attack on Poltava on Tuesday was the latest major strike in Ukraine in the 30 months since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion. Parts of the country lie in ruins. Aerial bombardment and ground fighting have taken a particular toll in eastern Ukraine, and many of the towns and cities that Russia has captured have been shattered. The New York Times recently took a closer look at the scale of that damage.
Marc Santora
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
President Zelensky has just offered his first public comments today on the overhaul of his government, saying it is designed to bring “a new energy” to his administration. “These steps are related to strengthening our state in various areas,” he said during a meeting in Kyiv with Prime Minister Simon Harris of Ireland. Zelensky declined to comment on where some of the ministers who tendered their resignations, including the country’s foreign minister, might end up in the reshuffle.
Maria Varenikova
Reporting from Poltava, Ukraine
Here in Poltava, more than 24 hours after the missile strike on the Ukrainian military academy, emergency workers pulled a woman from under the rubble around noon. An ambulance brought the young woman, who was unconscious and had bruises on her face, to a hospital. As time goes on, the chances of finding living survivors are running low.
Maria Varenikova
Reporting from Poltava, Ukraine
Just today, 255 people in Poltava have donated blood at the local blood center. “An hour after the explosion, there was already a line,” said Volodymyr Rudikov, a doctor there. “We were begging them to come on Monday as we will need blood then, too,” he said.
Nader Ibrahim
Drone footage shared by the State Emergency Service of Lviv reveals destruction caused by the Russian attack this morning on the western Ukrainian city. At least seven people were killed.
In Poltava, an exhausting search through rubble is punctuated by air-raid sirens.
A day after a devastating Russian missile attack that killed more than 50 people in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, bricks splayed out from the stricken military academy building as exhausted rescue workers searched for bodies in the rubble, stopping every so often to listen for cries for help.
Overnight into Wednesday morning, workers napped on the academy’s lawn, some using helmets as pillows, as rescue dogs sat nearby. The rescuers, their uniforms covered in concrete dust, appeared to glisten in the floodlights at the site.
The bombing injured 277 people, according to Valerii Parkhomenko, a deputy mayor, and local hospitals were flooded with casualties.
Emergency workers at the strike site appeared exhausted, walking from time to time to a nearby tent providing coffee and snacks. “A lot more clearing needs to be done before we reach the bottom,” said one, who asked to be cited only his first name, Vladyslav.
He asked for coffee.
“Anything else?” a volunteer handing out drinks and sandwiches asked.
“No, just coffee,” he said.
However horrible the scene, volunteers and firefighters said it had become an all-too familiar ritual in the 30-month war with Russia.
“I saw nothing new here,” said Maksym Luhivsky, a 25-year-old volunteer, as he urged emergency workers to eat something to sustain their strength. “I’ve seen it all. When people come up because they can’t find their loved ones, that’s when it’s emotional. Dead bodies are not shocking or emotional any longer.”
The rescue was interrupted by 13 air-raid alerts on Tuesday and Wednesday, as Russia sent jets into the air that threatened to fire missiles; the activity triggers alerts even if no missile were fired.
A firefighter, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Dmytro, said the repeated alerts had slowed the rescue effort, but that he and his colleagues had learned to work while frequently leaving the site for short periods in case of a repeat attack. “We do this often,” he said.
Nearby, teachers at a kindergarten were still directing toddlers into a basement bomb shelter when explosions rocked the building.
“They are trained, they know: an alarm, run to put on shoes,” said Valeria Nor, 32, a mother who raced to check on her 3-year-old daughter. “But they are small, and it takes time.”
Nobody was hurt, but Ms. Nor said that when she arrived, the kindergartners were crying and frightened. In the neighborhood outside, soldiers and cadets from the military academy had fanned out, some drenched in blood.
They bandaged one another’s wounds, and residents helped, she said. Some soldiers had blood coming out of their ears.
Ms. Nor’s husband, a doctor, ran to treat the wounded while she bought water and juice for the shocked cadets.
“At the beginning of this war, we thought we would take the children and run if there were just one bang nearby,” she said. “But we didn’t run. We came to the epicenter to help.”
Marc Santora
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
While several members of President Zelensky’s cabinet have offered to resign, political analysts said major policy changes were unlikely. Zelensky has fired only five ministers over the course of the war, and today’s moves had long been discussed, said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst. He said the president was trying to combat “stagnation” in key ministries: “He thinks that new people will be more motivated and will bring new ideas.”
Marc Santora
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
Critics, however, worried that the changes could further concentrate power in Zelensky’s office, depending on who is named to fill vacated posts. The Ukrainian leader has only fired a handful of top officials during the course of the war, which has created stability but also led to charges of an insular style resistant to change. “In practice, we see that all the decisions are made by the president’s office,” Fesenko said.
Marc Santora
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
While the Lviv region has come under repeated assault over the course of the war, attacks directed at the city’s historic center — a UNESCO World Heritage site — have been rare. At least seven architectural monuments were damaged in the attack today, said the head of the Lviv military administration, Maksym Kozytskyi. At the Center for Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, housed in a 19th-century villa, the shock wave blew away window frames and collapsed ceilings, he said.
Shawn Paik
Video of charred cars, damaged buildings and streets littered with rubble showed the scale of destruction in Lviv following Russia’s attack on the city.
Marc Santora
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
Ukraine’s Air Force said it had shot down about half the missiles and three-quarters of the attack drones Russia launched overnight, but these frequent barrages have stretched its defenses. On Tuesday, President Zelensky repeated his call for not only more air defense systems from Western allies but also the permission to strike at Russian missiles before they are fired.
Marc Santora
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
The attacks on Wednesday came as Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on the most sweeping overhaul of his administration since Russia invaded in 2022, and as fighting along the front intensified, with Russian forces on an unrelenting campaign to advance in the eastern Donbas region.
Marc Santora
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
Emergency workers were still sifting through the rubble for the victims of a deadly attack in Poltava when Russia launched another barrage of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Wednesday. The latest attacks killed at least seven people in Lviv, near the border with Poland.
Ukraine’s foreign minister offers to resign as Zelensky plans major shake-up.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, offered to resign on Wednesday amid plans by President Volodymyr Zelensky to restructure his cabinet in the biggest shake-up since Russia invaded more than two years ago.
At least six other senior leaders in Mr. Zelensky’s government have offered to resign, said Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament. More cabinet members were expected to offer their resignations on Wednesday, and a new list of ministers was to be presented on Thursday.
“Our state institutions must be set up in such a way that Ukraine will achieve all the results we need — for all of us,” Mr. Zelensky said in an address to the nation on Tuesday night. “To do this, we need to strengthen some areas in the government — and personnel decisions have been prepared.”
The restructuring appears to be the most far-reaching shake-up of Mr. Zelensky’s administration since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and it comes at a particularly precarious moment in the war, with Kyiv rushing reinforcements to its eastern front in an attempt to stabilize its defensive lines.
Mr. Stefanchuk said other government leaders who had submitted their resignations included Oleksandr Kamyshin, the minister of strategic industries; Denys Maliuska, the justice minister; Ruslan Strilets, the minister of environmental protection and natural resources; Vitaliy Koval, the head of the state property fund; Iryna Vereshchuk, the minister for the reintegration of temporarily occupied territories; and Olha Stefanishyna, the deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration.
Missile and drone attacks across Ukraine kill at least 7 in Lviv.
Russia bombarded a swath of Ukraine early Wednesday, killing at least seven people in the western city of Lviv, local Ukrainian officials said, a day after a ballistic missile attack in the eastern city of Poltava left dozens of people dead.
Air raid sirens sounded in a number of places across Ukraine on Wednesday morning as guided missiles and drones flew in, with the authorities urging people to take cover or go to shelters.
Ukraine’s Air Force said the country had been targeted with two ballistic missiles, 11 cruise missiles and 29 drones overnight and that 22 of the drones and seven of the cruise missiles had been shot down.
In the Lviv region, the military administrator, Maksym Kozytskyi, said drones and cruise missiles were headed toward the city of Lviv and, later, that there was “very loud” impact. He posted a video on Telegram in which a heavily damaged building could be seen in the background and told residents to remain in shelters.
Seven people were killed — including a mother and her three daughters, ages seven, 18 and 21 — according to the city’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi. Ukrainian officials had earlier reported that three children were among the dead.
Dozens of others were injured and at least one residential building near Lviv’s main train station was on fire, Mr. Sadovyi said on the messaging app Telegram.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on the social media platform X that residential buildings, schools, and medical facilities had been damaged and repeated a call for allies to provide more long-range weapons capability.
The Russian military also bombarded the Kherson region, in Ukraine’s south, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the head of the regional administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram. The attacks hit a number of targets, including five high-rise buildings, and killed three people, Mr. Prokudin said.
The central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih was also targeted with attacks that damaged a hotel, high-rise buildings and educational institutions, injuring at least five people, according to Serhiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
On Tuesday, Russian missiles hit a military academy in Poltava, minutes after air raid alarms had sounded, giving people little time to seek shelter.
That attack left more than 50 people dead and wounded at least 271. Rescue work there was continuing, Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine said in his nightly address on Tuesday.
Anushka Patil contributed reporting.
Here are some of the other deadly strikes in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
The Russian missile strike Tuesday on a military academy and nearby hospital in eastern Ukraine, which killed more than 50 people, was one of the deadliest attacks since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
At least 11,520 civilians had been killed in the war as of July 2024, according to a United Nations report, which added that the actual tally may be higher. The number of troops killed is harder to pin down. U.S. officials said in August that nearly 500,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded on both sides, though they cautioned that Moscow likely undercounts its casualties, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures.
Here are some of the deadliest attacks of the past two years:
July 8, 2024: A Russian missile destroyed Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, in Kyiv, part of a barrage of bombings across the country that killed at least 38 people.
Jan. 24, 2024: A Russian military plane crashed near the border with Ukraine, killing 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, Russian officials said. They accused Ukraine of striking the aircraft with missiles. Russia’s claims could not be independently verified.
Oct. 5, 2023: More than 50 people were killed in a strike in Hroza, a small Ukrainian village with no obvious military ties. Ukrainian officials blamed a Russian Iskander missile.
Jan. 15, 2023: A Russian missile with a 2,000-pound warhead obliterated an apartment complex in Dnipro, killing 46 people, including six children.
Sept. 30, 2022: Russian missiles struck a convoy of vehicles transporting people fleeing fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, killing at least 30 people and wounding 88 others, local Ukrainian officials reported.
July 9, 2022: An apartment complex in Chasiv Yar, a small city in Donetsk Province, was hit by a Russian strike, killing at least 43 people, according to local emergency services.
May 17, 2022: Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said 87 people were killed in a Russian airstrike in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region.
April 8, 2022: Russian shelling killed more than 50 civilians at a train station in Kramatorsk, in Donetsk Province. This attack marked the start of Russia’s campaign to seize the Donbas region.
March 16, 2022: A Russian airstrike hit a theater in Mariupol with the word “children” written in large white lettering outside to signal that the building was sheltering civilians. Estimates about the death toll vary. Amnesty International, a British-based nonprofit, reported at least 12 people were killed but survivors told a reporter from The Times that between 60 and 200 people were killed.
March 13, 2022: Russian missiles hit a military base in Yavoriv, near the Polish border. The strike killed at least 35 people and injured at least 134 more, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it killed 180 foreign fighters in the attack. The New York Times could not independently verify either claim.
An emergency volunteer describes a horrific scene after the missile strike in Poltava.
Rescue workers from the State Emergency Service were already on the scene, desperately searching for survivors, when Denys Kliap arrived. They were pulling bodies from the rubble “without legs, others without arms, some even without heads,” he said.
Shattered glass was everywhere. Nearby buildings showed gaping holes where windows and doors had been blasted off.
Mr. Kliap, the 26-year-old director of Free and Unbreakable, a volunteer rapid response team in the eastern Ukrainian city of Poltava, had seen many such scenes of carnage. But the devastation of the strikes on Tuesday still shocked him.
“When we arrived, the only thing I remember was the pile of bodies scattered all over the territory of the institute,” he said.
Russian missile strikes on a military academy and a neighboring hospital in Poltava, about 100 miles from the Russian border, had residents scrambling to reach shelters on Tuesday, often unsuccessfully, with many reporting that sirens sounded only very shortly before the attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes had been carried out with ballistic missiles, which can travel at supersonic speed and reach a target anywhere in Ukraine in a matter of minutes.
“Unfortunately, there was not enough time for all the people to run to the shelter,” said Markiyan, 25, a young soldier who asked not to be identified by last name and said he was inside a building in the complex of the military training institute that was hit. “There was too little time between the air raid alert and the first strike,” he said.
Markiyan, who appeared to be in shock and had minor shrapnel wounds on his hands and face, said the strikes hit in rapid succession, shortly after air raid sirens sounded, and that people were sprinting to bomb shelters. “After the first strike, I was blown under the stairwell by the shock wave,” he said. “When I was trying to recover and continue to take cover, the second strike occurred.”
The soldier struggled to express and formulate his thoughts, mentioning that many of his friends remained trapped under the rubble. But his account of the timing echoed those of others in the city, like Olena Serdyuk, who told the BBC: “The air raid alert started in just a minute, and then there were two explosions.”
The strikes on Tuesday left more than 50 people dead and more than 200 injured. It was the latest in a string of deadly Russian attacks.
Air raid sirens continued to sound as emergency crews worked at the site of the strikes late Tuesday. Images from the scene showed buildings at the military institute gutted but still standing.
In the block where the military institute stands, mobile air defense units were stationed, ready to shoot down any additional aerial threats that might target the complex again.
Just after the missiles struck, there were reports in the Ukrainian media that cadets had been lined up outside the military school. Vladimir Rogov, a Kremlin-appointed occupation official in southern Ukraine, also claimed that the missiles hit cadets gathered for an event. But a spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry, Dmytro Lazutkin, denied on national television that the victims were participating in a parade or ceremony, saying that classes were underway when the air raid sirens sounded.
Mr. Kliap said in a telephone interview on Tuesday evening that it did not appear to him that there had been some sort of gathering at the military institute at the time of the strikes because the victims he saw at the scene were spread over a wide area. He noted that it appeared a number of victims were caught in the blast as they raced to the shelter. “I doubt it was a gathering,” he said. “And from what we’ve heard, everyone says there wasn’t one.”
With more than 200 people injured, he said, the local hospitals were overwhelmed.
“The hospitals are full,” he said. “All the doctors who were on vacation have returned to work because the situation is very critical.”
After the first chaotic hours following the attack, when his team helped emergency workers tend to the wounded and pull the dead from the ruins, Mr. Kliap said he spent the evening helping civilians living nearby board up windows blown out by the blast, and providing assistance to particularly vulnerable people whose homes had been struck.
“We are providing temporary help to allow them to sleep at night, prevent rain from coming in, and avoid further consequences,” he said.
They also brought about 300 meals for emergency crews as they worked late into the night
“It was very terrifying,” Mr. Kliap said, describing what he’d seen in his city that day. “We’ve never seen anything like this in Poltava before.”
But Poltava is no stranger to war, historically, and the strike in the city has a particular resonance for Russia. It is the site of a consequential battle in 1709 between Sweden and Russia — with Ukrainian factions joining both sides — that marked the start of Russia’s dominance in the Baltic region and dashed the dreams of Ukrainian nationalists of the time who had sided with Sweden.
Poltava was largely destroyed in World War II, and the modern city has in great part been reconstructed since. It’s now home to about 450,000 people, according to local authorities, and is a hub of tech development.
In a note offering condolences to the relatives of the dead in Tuesday’s strike, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, wrote, “Russia is taking away our most valuable asset, our lives.”
:
An earlier version of this article misstated the position of Dmytro Lazutkin. He is a defense ministry spokesman, not the defense minister.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Inside the Pope’s Visit to Indonesia
Emma Bubola
Pope Francis began his 11-day tour of four island nations across Southeast Asia and Oceania on Tuesday, an ambitious endeavor that will bring him to faraway corners of the Roman Catholic world.
His first stop was Indonesia, a country made up of thousands of islands with the largest Muslim population in the world, as well as millions of people following other religions. There, Pope Francis talked about interfaith dialogue and coexistence, praising Indonesia for nurturing harmony between its different ethnicities, languages and religions, which he compared to the country’s rich ecological biodiversity.
After Indonesia, the pope was set to travel to Papua New Guinea, a largely Christian Pacific island, East Timor and Singapore.
Jakarta, Indonesia
Crowds waiting for the pope’s motorcade to approach on Wednesday.
Francis addressing the congregation at the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, the Jakarta cathedral.
Pope Francis meeting President Joko Widodo of Indonesia.
Nuns watching for the pope’s arrival at the Jakarta cathedral.
Waving at the vehicle carrying Pope Francis near the Vatican Embassy.
A police officer patrolling in front of the Istiqlal Mosque, which is opposite the cathedral.
The pope and Mr. Widodo during a welcome ceremony for the pontiff.
The pope’s 11-day tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania will test his endurance.
Indonesians in ceremonial attire leading a procession welcoming the pope.
Jockeying for position to grab a picture.
A group of Papuans holding up signs featuring Bible verses during a protest at the Vatican Embassy calling for Francis to visit the Papua Province of Indonesia.
Audience members at the cathedral reaching out to touch Francis.
Deregulation and Dishonesty Led to Deadly Grenfell Fire, Inquiry Finds
Seven years after flames engulfed Grenfell Tower, a public housing block in West London, killing 72 people, a public inquiry on Wednesday blamed unscrupulous manufacturers, a cost-cutting local government and reckless deregulation for the disaster, Britain’s worst residential fire since World War II.
The 1,671-page final report laid out a litany of corner-cutting, dishonest sales practices, incompetence and lax regulation that led to the tower being wrapped in low-cost flammable cladding, which, after it caught fire in the early hours of June 14, 2017, quickly turned the building into an inferno.
Many of the causes laid out in the report were documented in months of testimony before the inquiry, which was called by the prime minister at the time, Theresa May, and chaired over a seven-year period by a retired judge, Martin Moore-Bick.
But the report painted a damning picture of a Conservative-run local council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, eager to reduce costs, working with contractors who installed combustible cladding panels, purchased from suppliers who knew that they should never have been used in a high-rise building.
The suppliers “engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data, and mislead the market,” the report said. In the case of the flammable foam insulation installed alongside the panels, it said one of the key regulators, the Building Research Establishment, “was complicit in that strategy.”
Among the companies that came under the harshest criticism was Arconic, an American aluminum maker formerly known as Alcoa. It sold the cladding for Grenfell, the report said, but “deliberately concealed from the market the true extent of the danger” of using it in a high-rise structure.
Arconic has previously acknowledged its role in the tragedy as a supplier of building materials.
The publication of the report is a milestone in the aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy, which has haunted Britain since 2017, when images of the burning building and of the desperate efforts to save its trapped residents appalled the British public. In the years since, Grenfell has become a politically charged symbol of the costs of deregulation and of the persistent social inequality in Britain’s capital.
“How was it possible in 21st-century London for a reinforced concrete building, itself structurally impervious to fire, to be turned into a death trap that would enable fire to sweep through it an uncontrolled way in a matter of hours, despite what were thought to be effective regulations designed to prevent just such an event?” the authors of the report said in setting out their investigation.
“There is no simple answer,” they concluded. But the inquiry found fault with virtually everyone involved in the 2015 project to refurbish Grenfell Tower, a 24-floor public housing block that was originally constructed in 1972, its Brutalist style a striking landmark near some of London’s most upscale neighborhoods.
“The choice of combustible materials for the cladding of Grenfell Tower resulted from a series of errors caused by the incompetence of the organizations and individuals involved in the refurbishment,” the report said.
Relatives of the victims hope the publication of the report will open the door to prosecution of those involved in the refurbishment, as well as the management and upkeep, of the building. But criminal trials are not expected to begin before 2027, a decade after the disaster.
In 2023, about 900 people settled a civil case against Kensington and Chelsea, as well as French and American companies that sold the cladding and insulation. The settlement, worth 150 million pounds, or $196 million, was mediated by David Neuberger, a former president of Britain’s Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, relatives of the victims expressed satisfaction that the report had established a chain of culpability for the disaster. But some said they were still frustrated that people had not yet been brought to justice.
Joe Powell, the Labour member of Parliament for Kensington and Bayswater, said in a statement, “The government and police must now do everything in their power to bring those responsible to justice, using the full force of the law.”
While much of the report focused on suppliers and contractors, it was also critical of local and national governments and regulatory agencies, which it said were well aware of the risks of combustible cladding in high-rise buildings. It said the Department for Communities and Local Government, which has since been reorganized, was dominated by a zeal for deregulation in the years leading up to the fire, disregarding the lessons of a deadly high-rise apartment fire in London in 2009.
“The government’s deregulatory agenda, enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and the secretary of state, dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded,” the report said, referring to the housing secretary at the time, Eric Pickles.
The report recommended that the government consolidate the fragmented regulations governing the construction industry under a single regulator.
London’s fire brigade also came in for criticism for not being adequately prepared to respond to a fast-spreading fire in a high-rise residential building. The report said firefighters were overwhelmed by the large number of calls for help, from inside and outside the building.
Grenfell’s tenant management organization was faulted for its antagonistic relationship with those who lived in the tower, some of whom it regarded as “militant troublemakers” when they raised safety concerns.
Many residents regarded the tenant organization as an “uncaring and bullying overlord that belittled and marginalized them, regarded them as a nuisance, or worse, and failed to take their concerns seriously,” the report said.
Still, of all the responsible parties, the inquiry portrayed the contractors and suppliers as the prime culprits.
It said Celotex, which made the plastic foam insulation, “embarked on a dishonest scheme to mislead its customers and the wider market.” Kingspan, an Irish company that supplied a small portion of the insulation, “knowingly created a false market in insulation for use” in high-rise buildings, the report said, by misrepresenting test results to reassure customers that its product was safe in buildings taller than 18 meters, or 59 feet.
The report said the project itself was dogged by cost-cutting, incompetence and a refusal to take responsibility. The landlord pushed the principal contractor, Rydon, to shave costs from its bid. The architecture firm, Studio E, favored using zinc panels, but switched to ones made with cheaper aluminum composite material because they were cheaper, failing to recognize their fire risk.
“Studio E therefore bears a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster,” the report said.
But it was not alone. The report said all the contractors and designers either disregarded regulations or shifted responsibility for meeting them.
“Everyone involved in the choice of materials to be used in the external wall thought that responsibility for their suitability and safety lay with someone else,” the report concluded.
Missile and Drone Attacks Across Ukraine Kill at Least 7 in Lviv
Missile and Drone Attacks Across Ukraine Kill at Least 7 in Lviv
Russia attacked a number of cities a day after a devastating strike in the country’s east, Ukrainian officials said.
Victoria Kim and Qasim Nauman
Russia bombarded a swath of Ukraine early Wednesday, killing at least seven people in the western city of Lviv, local Ukrainian officials said, a day after a ballistic missile attack in the eastern city of Poltava left dozens of people dead.
Air raid sirens sounded in a number of places across Ukraine on Wednesday morning as guided missiles and drones flew in, with the authorities urging people to take cover or go to shelters.
Ukraine’s Air Force said the country had been targeted with two ballistic missiles, 11 cruise missiles and 29 drones overnight and that 22 of the drones and seven of the cruise missiles had been shot down.
In the Lviv region, the military administrator, Maksym Kozytskyi, said drones and cruise missiles were headed toward the city of Lviv and, later, that there was “very loud” impact. He told residents to remain in shelters.
Mr. Kozytskyi said seven people, including three children, had been killed and that dozens of others were injured. He posted a video on Telegram in which a heavily damaged building could be seen in the background.
At least one residential building near Lviv’s main train station was on fire, the city’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, said on the messaging app Telegram.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on the social media platform X that residential buildings, schools, and medical facilities had been damaged and repeated a call for allies to provide more long-range weapons capability.
The Russian military also bombarded the Kherson region, in Ukraine’s south, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the head of the regional administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram. The attacks hit a number of targets, including five high-rise buildings, and killed three people, Mr. Prokudin said.
The central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih was also targeted with attacks that damaged a hotel, high-rise buildings and educational institutions, injuring at least five people, according to Serhiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
On Tuesday, Russian missiles hit a military academy in Poltava, minutes after air raid alarms had sounded, giving people little time to seek shelter.
That attack left more than 50 people dead and wounded at least 271. Rescue work there was continuing, Mr. Zelensky of Ukraine said in his nightly address on Tuesday.
Mexico’s Lower House of Congress Approves President’s Judicial Overhaul
Legislators in Mexico’s lower house of Congress on Wednesday morning approved a sweeping proposal to redesign the entire judiciary, the first step toward shifting the country to a system in which nearly every judge is elected to office.
The vote advances one of the most far-reaching judicial overhauls in any major democracy in recent decades, raising tensions in Mexico over whether the measures will improve the functioning of the country’s courts or politicize the judiciary in favor of the ruling Morena party and its allies. In the current system, judges are appointed based on special training and qualifications.
The lower house will now have to iron out more than 600 details of the bill before it moves to the Senate, where the ruling bloc is just one seat short of a supermajority — though the measure is expected to pass.
On Tuesday, when lawmakers met to discuss the initiative, eight of the 11 Supreme Court justices voted to suspend sessions for the rest of the week in support of striking judicial employees at the high court, who began a walkout earlier in the week — joining the hundreds of judicial workers and federal judges across Mexico who went on indefinite strike last month over the proposed changes.
In the hope of delaying the vote, striking workers formed a human chain to block access to Mexico’s lower house. But legislators switched venues to a sports complex and proceeded with the debate, which often turned into a tense exchange of accusations.
After an hourslong session that dragged on well into Wednesday morning, 359 lawmakers present voted in favor of the overhaul. Only 135 opposed it.
The results reflected the governing Morena party’s exceptional sway, which was achieved by landslide victories in a general election in June.
Members of Morena mobilized to approve the proposal at the bequest of the departing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is in the last month of his six-year term. His successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, has fully backed the plan.
“We went to the streets, we went knocking on doors, we went to towns,” Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the lower house, said during the debate, “and we told the people that if they voted for us we would vote for the reforms of President López Obrador. We did not deceive them, we did not deceive anyone.”
Mr. López Obrador’s plan has sparked recent protests across the country and has even been at the center of a diplomatic spat with the U.S. ambassador, Ken Salazar, who called it “a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.”
The government says the proposed measures — which, among other things, would allow voters to elect nearly all of the country’s more than 7,000 federal, state and local judges — are needed to modernize the judiciary and instill trust in a system plagued by corruption, influence-peddling and nepotism.
Many critics of the plan agree that the system needs revamping. But they warn that the government’s proposal would do little to rid the judiciary of its problems. Instead, they say it would erode judicial independence and allow Mr. López Obrador’s political movement to concentrate power.
“Let’s say it loud and let’s say it clear,” said Patricia Flores, a lawmaker with the opposition Citizens’ Movement party, during the debate on Tuesday. “More than a judicial reform, this is an act of revenge — because the judiciary has been a counterweight to the decisions of the president.”
Although a few countries do allow the election of some judges by popular vote — including the United States, Switzerland and Japan — experts say none of them do it in such a sweeping way as the proposed changes would.
Mexico’s experiment, if approved, would shift the judiciary from an appointment system largely based on legal training and qualifications to one in which candidates with a law degree and relatively little experience could run to be elected as a judge.
“We’re going to see some very bad rulings at the beginning,” said Juan Jesús Garza Onofre, a constitutional law researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “There is going to be a learning curve that involves delaying processes that are already underway. They’re not going to take over the reins of the court overnight.” (Each of the more than 1,600 Mexican federal judges deals with, on average, 19 cases per week.)
Hamlet García Almaguer, a Morena legislator, said the bill calls for the creation of committees to evaluate aspirants’ skills and experience before they are allowed to run.
The bill would create a Tribunal for Judicial Discipline, also elected by popular vote, with broad powers to investigate, penalize and possibly fire or impeach judges — not including Supreme Court justices. The tribunal’s decisions would be final and not subject to appeal.
The tribunal, Mr. García Almaguer said, is needed because current disciplinary mechanisms have had little effect. “There is a mantle of impunity linked to nepotism and the relationships that exist there,” he said, adding that hundreds of judges and judicial workers have relatives working within the judiciary.
Critics of the overhaul, however, say that the tribunal or party leaders could put pressure on judges to deliver the rulings they want. “This would become a tool of political persecution,” said Judge Juana Fuentes, a member of the federal judiciary who opposes the plan. They could tell judges, she said, “You have to rule like this because, see, if you don’t, I’ll remove you.”