President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will urge stronger pressure on Moscow when he meets with allies in Denmark and France on Wednesday after Russian forces launched a massive airstrike on Ukraine, damaging energy and transport infrastructure.

Russia launched more than 500 drones and dozens of missiles, hitting infrastructure at 14 locations across the country and injuring four railway workers, regional and Ukrainian military officials said.

"This is clearly a demonstrative attack by Russia. Only because of the lack of adequate pressure, especially on Russia's war economy, does this aggression continue," Zelenskiy said via the Telegram app.

"We will discuss the need for strong pressure measures with our partners in the coming days."

Zelenskiy said he would participate in a summit with Nordic and Baltic countries on Wednesday and then plan to travel to France, where he will meet with EU and US allies to discuss the next steps within the "coalition of the willing," a group of countries that have pledged to help Ukraine.

Amid international pressure to broker an end to Russia's three-and-a-half-year war, Kyiv wants security guarantees to deter future Russian attacks.

NATO Chief Mark Rutte said he expected clarity at the Paris meeting on Friday or soon after on what guarantees the coalition could provide to Kyiv. US President Donald Trump has indicated that the United States could support any European peacekeeping plan, but would not deploy US troops to Ukraine. Russia has rejected plans for a future Western peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a military parade in Beijing marking the end of World War II, where Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that the world faces a choice between peace and war. Air raid warnings sounded for hours across Ukraine, with explosions heard in nine of its 24 regions, from Kyiv to Lviv and Volyn in the west, Ukrainian officials and media said. The Ukrainian Air Force said it had shot down 430 of the 502 drones and 21 of the 24 missiles launched by Russia overnight, adding that three missiles and 69 drones hit 14 locations.

Four railway workers in the central Ukrainian region of Kirovohrad were hospitalized after the Russian strikes, according to a statement from the state-owned railway company via the Telegram messaging app, which flagged delays of up to seven hours for some services due to damage to facilities. The railway workers were among five people injured at the major Znamyanka railway hub, where 28 homes were also damaged, Ukrainian emergency services reported via Telegram.

In northern Chernihiv, the strikes cut power to 30,000 consumers and damaged critical civilian infrastructure, Governor Viacheslav Chaus said. Public transport in the western Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi faced "significant schedule disruptions" following the attack, its administration said via Telegram, with the region's governor reporting fires and damage to residential buildings, among other things. Firefighters in the Ivano-Frankivsk region were battling a blaze that engulfed a 9,000-square-meter (10,800-square-yard) storage facility, emergency services said. (alg)

Source: Reuters