KHARKIV, Ukraine – Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight on Saturday, damaging infrastructure and killing at least 10 people, including two children, in the northeast city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia targeted the energy sector and railway infrastructure across the country.
“There should be a response from partners to these savage strikes against life,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram app.
“Russia has not abandoned its attempts to destroy Ukraine’s residential and critical infrastructure, and therefore support should continue,” Zelenskiy said, urging partners to continue air defence and weapons supplies.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov and regional prosecutors put the death toll in the city at 11, one more than Zelenskiy’s estimate.
Zelenskiy, speaking later in his nightly video address, described the strike as “horrific.” He said rescue crews, including specialists from other regions, were still clearing rubble and searching for bodies underneath.
Ukrainian air defence units shot down 453 drones and 19 missiles, the air force said. But nine missiles and 26 attack drones hit 22 sites, it said.
BALLISTIC MISSILE SLAMS INTO RESIDENTIAL BUILDING
The city of Kharkiv was targeted by Russian drones and missiles, and 11 people, including two children, were killed after a Russian ballistic missile slammed into a five-storey residential building, Terekhov said.
“When we arrived here 20 minutes after the explosion, I thought I was going to have a stroke. I couldn’t string two words together, and my legs were buckling,” Hanna, a resident of the destroyed building, told Reuters.
“It’s good that I wasn’t there with my child and that my father was with me. It was ordinary people who lived there. What were they targeting?”
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces carried out massive overnight strikes on Ukrainian military-industrial complexes, military airfields and energy facilities, the Interfax news agency reported.
In Kharkiv, 15 people were also wounded, and 19 residential buildings were damaged by the Russian attacks, Kharkiv Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Commercial and administrative buildings, electricity distribution lines, and cars were also hit, he said.
In Kyiv, three people were injured, and the heating was knocked out in 2,806 residential apartment buildings in four districts across the capital after Russian strikes hit an energy infrastructure facility, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
National grid operator Ukrenergo said emergency power cuts were introduced in seven regions following the Russian attacks.
Ukrainian officials said that Russia also attacked four railway stations and other railway infrastructure in central Ukraine and port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region, setting on fire containers with vegetable oil and damaging a grain warehouse.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash in Kyiv and Vitalii Hnidyi in Kharkiv. Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Mark Potter)
