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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Wednesday was poised to undertake the biggest shake-up of his government since Russia’s full-scale invasion, with half a dozen senior figures tendering their resignations, as Moscow carried out more deadly airstrikes.
Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister, has offered to resign as have at least six others, according to the speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament. Mr. Zelensky said Tuesday that “personnel decisions have been prepared” to fortify his government in the war.
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. The shake-up comes 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.
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:
Poltava aftermath: The strikes on Wednesday came a day after a devastating Russian missile strike in Poltava in the country’s east killed 51 people and injured 271, Ukrainian officials said. On Wednesday morning, exhausted, dust-covered rescuers were continuing to pull debris and bodies from the ruins left by that attack.
Biden’s response: President Biden said in a statement that he condemned the attack on Poltava, and he renewed his criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He called the strike “a tragic reminder of Putin’s ongoing and outrageous attempts to break the will of a free people.”
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.
Cabinet shake-up: Mr. Kuleba, a familiar face in allied capitals who had helped lead Ukraine’s lobbying for Western weapons to battle Russia, 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.
Drone footage shared by the State Emergency Service of Lviv reveals the extent of destruction caused by the Russian attack this morning on the western Ukrainian city, which left at least 7 dead.
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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.”
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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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 Ukraine’s defense minister, 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.”
