Russia Strikes Cities Across Ukraine in Overnight Attack

And in Cherkasy in central Ukraine, one person had been rescued from a building in the city center, and rescuers were searching for survivors buried under rubble, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Mr. Zelensky spent two days this week in New York at the United Nations, denouncing Russia’s “unprovoked aggression and appealing for more financial and military aid. There has been growing concern about Ukraine’s ability to regain territory and the ballooning cost of the war. Russia launched the missiles hours after Mr. Zelensky’s speech.

Ukraine launched a counter offensive in June to retake occupied land in the south and east of the country. While it has registered some success amid heavy fighting that has been costly for both sides, it is yet to achieve a decisive breakthrough of Russia’s defenses. At the same time, the Black Sea has become an increasingly central theater in the conflict with both sides waging attacks.

On Thursday, Mr. Zelensky was expected to meet with President Biden in Washington to push for more support. Mr. Biden is preparing to push through an additional $24 billion for Ukraine in Congress.

Moscow has, in the past year, appeared to schedule significant missile barrages to coincide with high profile diplomatic events connected with Ukraine.

Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app that the latest attacks meant that the city’s residents had endured more than 1,000 hours, or more than 41 days, of being under air alerts since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. There was a second air raid alert in the capital at 7:15 a.m.

In Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that six missiles caused multiple blasts and wounded at least two people.

In Kherson in the country’s south, a Russian attack left two people dead and several others hurt, according to the regional military administration. Officials there did not specify if the deaths resulted from a missile strike. Since Moscow withdrew its forces from the city 10 months ago in what was, at that time, a significant victory for Ukraine, it has launched thousands of shells at the city and the surrounding area from its positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro River.

Ukraine’s public broadcaster, Suspilne, reported that explosions were also heard in the cities of Rivne, Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi in the country’s west.

On Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Lula had their first in-person meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, and the talks were much friendlier.

“Both presidents now understand their positions much better than before,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, told reporters after the meeting, which he called “ice-breaking” and “warm and honest.”

Mauro Vieira, Brazil’s foreign minister, said both leaders explained their views on the war and that “there is absolutely no disagreement.”

Mr. Lula for months has said that while Russia deserves to be condemned for the invasion, Ukraine and the West are also instigators. He has refused to sell weapons to Ukraine to maintain neutrality and has said he instead wants to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table.

Those stances have frustrated Ukraine and the West, and the tensions between Ukraine and Brazil got worse after the Group of 7 meeting of the world’s major industrial democracies in May in Japan, where Mr. Lula and Mr. Zelensky failed to meet despite previous plans and then blamed each other.

Mr. Vieira and Mr. Kuleba said on Wednesday that the two nations agreed to meet again when they could and participate in coordination meetings for a peace proposal by Ukraine. Mr. Vieira said Brazil would also continue to speak to Russia.

“Brazil keeps channels open with all countries,” he said, adding, “We are willing and ready to listen to all sides.”

Ukrainian officials say that about a third of the country’s territory is potentially laden with land mines and unexploded ordnance, which pose grave risks to civilians for years to come. State agencies and foreign charities currently carry out most demining operations, but at the rate the government’s 16 certified demining teams are working, they say it would take hundreds of years to clear the country.

So Ukraine’s economic development ministry is trying to draw in private entrepreneurs and encourage innovation. The first test of its commercial demining initiative was at a site in central Ukraine on Wednesday, with demonstrations by three companies of their methods for detecting and destroying mines.

“We need to look for various ways of how to demine our land,” said Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s economic minister. “Otherwise, demining will take hundreds of years and we need to live and develop our economy now.”

The initiative covers humanitarian demining, or removing mines that linger for years or decades after battles end. It is distinct from clearing mines during combat — a job only performed by the military.

Creating a free market for demining has been a priority for the economic ministry. Its plan is for private landowners — farmers or local governments — to auction contracts to clear their sites in forested zones or open fields, which would have varying degrees of difficulty and dangers. The ministry now has 69 applications from private companies; when a company is certified, it can make a bid.

The initiative includes encouragement for domestic innovations that create products for export to other countries struggling with mines, rather than merely allowing Ukraine’s minefields to be used as testing grounds for established foreign defense industry companies.

“It is not our goal to make money as we want to demine our country,” said Riabchenko Ruslan, a designer with Postup Foundation, a group participating in the project. “But once the war is over, we will be able to export our technology” for demining and other niche applications, like archaeology.

Among supporters of the concept is Howard G. Buffett, a son of the billionaire investor Warren Buffett and a director of the global conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. The younger Mr. Buffett’s charity foundation supports demining efforts in Ukraine.

“It is really important to create the environment in which people are going to try to bring their best services and the best innovation to get this done,” Mr. Buffett said.

Beyond saving lives, demining agricultural land will play a role in lowering global food prices, Mr. Buffett said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Buffett met the first Ukrainian farmer to participate in a demining auction and observed the three companies that were demonstrating their work, including presenting drones designed to detect mines.

They worked in a field of dry, unharvested soy rimmed with white and red ribbons and signs with small skulls warning of mine danger, a common sight in Ukraine. Mine removal experts, using traditional methods of careful probing and walking with metal detectors, have been working two months just in this one field, clearing about 120 acres.

The presentation for drone detection was for an industry no country would want to excel at. Still, it was a sad and hopeful moment at once. “You are going to see Ukraine lead the world” in such technologies, Mr. Buffett said.