Russia on Saturday escalated its hostility by bombing a residential building in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, killing three people and wounding about 30.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted footage of a collapsed part of an apartment block and a crater outside.
“Russian terrorists have again attacked Kharkiv with guided bombs,” he wrote on Telegram after the latest attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. He said three people had died in the attack, while rescue workers were still clearing away debris.
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko said 29 people were injured.
Regional governor Oleg Sinegubov said two children were hospitalised and that “only civilian infrastructure was damaged”.
Kharkiv is close to the border with Russia, which launched an offensive in the region in May and seized much of the territory. It has targeted the city with aerial bombings.
In May, a directed bomb attack on a hardware store killed 16 people and injured dozens.
Defence Minister Rustam Umarov said last month that Russia had dropped nearly 10,000 guided bombs on Ukraine this year.
“This Russian terror with guided bombs must and can be stopped. We need tough decisions from our partners so that we can destroy Russian terrorists and Russian warplanes where they are,” Zelensky said.
Ukraine’s military said Russia also fired 16 cruise missiles and 13 attack drones at energy infrastructure in several regions.
The Ukrainian Energy Ministry said it was Russia’s “eighth major, joint attack on energy infrastructure facilities” in three months.
More than two years after the Russian invasion, missile and drone attacks have crippled Ukraine’s power generation capacity and forced Kiev to impose blackouts and import supplies from the European Union.
Russia said its troops launched a “massive attack from the air and sea using long-range high-precision weapons as well as drones against Ukrainian energy facilities powering weapons production.”
The defence ministry said the strikes also targeted warehouses storing munitions and “air weapons provided to the Ukrainian military by Western countries”.
“All identified targets were attacked,” the ministry said, justifying the attacks as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy networks.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said operator Ukrenergo’s “equipment at plants located in Zaporizhzhia and Lviv regions was damaged.”
Lviv region governor Maxim Kozitsky said a Russian attack caused a fire at “an important energy infrastructure facility”.
Ukrainergo said two workers were injured and were admitted to hospital in Zaporizhzhia, where Europe’s largest nuclear plant is located.
According to Zelensky, Russian attacks have destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy capacity.
He has repeatedly urged allies to send more air defense systems to protect the country’s critical infrastructure.
Russian shelling in southern Zaporizhzhia killed one civilian and destroyed residential buildings and infrastructure, according to the regional military administration.
Russia controls a portion of the region, including its nuclear plant.
The Russian-appointed administration said the Ukrainian attacks had damaged a substation at the plant but had not compromised nuclear safety.
Donetsk and Lugansk
Kiev’s military said border clashes broke out on Saturday in the Donetsk region near the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, where Moscow is “increasing the pace of offensive actions with the deployment of significant forces.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said troops had improved their positions in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the Kharkiv region.
Five civilians were killed in Russian shelling in forward areas of the Donetsk region, regional chief Vadim Filyashkin said.
Ukrainian police said a policeman manning a checkpoint in the southern Kherson region was killed in a drone attack.
Denis Pushilin, the head of Russian authorities in the Donetsk region, said the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk and the nearby town of Gorlivka had come under heavy attack from Ukraine.
He said three people working for a construction company were killed by rockets fired from cluster bombs.
Three others were injured in a drone attack on a civilian minibus, and another person was wounded by an anti-personnel mine, Pushilin said.
One person was killed in shelling on a business in Russia’s southern Belgorod region near the border with Kharkiv, Ukraine, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
