Two Russian missiles hit a military academy today in Poltava, a city in eastern Ukraine, killing more than 50 people and injuring scores of others, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine’s president said a hospital had also been hit. It was one of the most lethal attacks of the two-and-a-half-year war.

Moscow has accelerated the tempo of its attacks in Ukraine over the last few weeks, resulting in a wave of death and destruction. Just yesterday, Russian forces fired a volley of missiles into Ukraine for the third time in a week.

The assault comes at “a moment when the war is more dynamic on the front, with Ukraine pushing into Russia and Russia pressing deeper into eastern Ukraine,” said my colleague Marc Santora, who has been reporting from Kyiv. So far, Ukraine’s incursion has not drawn Russian troops out of their advance, as Ukrainian officials had hoped.

After today’s strikes, President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his pleas to Western allies for advanced air defense systems that can shoot down Russia’s ballistic missiles.

In Mongolia, Vladimir Putin received a red-carpet welcome. It was his first state visit to a member nation of the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for his arrest.