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Russia and Ukraine exchanged strikes overnight that killed civilians and injured many others on both sides, local authorities reported.
Large-scale Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian cities have become almost routine in recent weeks, with Moscow exploiting Ukraine’s critical shortage of interceptors for the US-made Patriot systems — the sole air defence weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles.
In the latest attacks, Ukrainian drones killed five people and injured two dozen others, including a four-year-old boy, in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, according to the regional administration.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says four people were killed in the Kyiv capital region, a three-year-old boy and his grandparents, in one strike, and later another fatality was reported in a separate strike, also on civilian infrastructure.
“More pressure is needed — new sanctions that will prevent Russia from producing these ballistic missiles. And our people absolutely need more protection. Anti-ballistic systems, interceptor missiles for Patriot, SAMP/T, NASAMS, and HAWK systems, as well as our F-16s,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian missiles struck a high-rise apartment block in the Saltivskyi district, killing three people and injuring 37, according to regional head Oleh Syniehubov.
At least six other deaths were reported in strikes on other frontline cities, including Sumy, Kherson and Donetsk in the eastern industrial Donbas region.
Eight more people were injured in Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa after “dozens of missiles and drones” struck the city and surrounding region, according to local administration head Oleh Kiper.
Ukrainian officials say 13 people were killed and approximately 90 others were injured in Russian attacks over the past 24 hours.
Zelenskyy has for months lobbied other countries, especially the United States, to send Ukraine more Patriot systems, made scarcer by the Iran war, arguing they are crucial for defending civilians.
Failing that, Zelenskyy wants to make Patriot ammunition in Ukraine or get approval from Elon Musk to use his Starlink satellite communications system to guide strikes inside Russia that can hit its missile launchers.
Meanwhile, Kyiv has kept up long-range drone strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, as well as the country’s largest online retailer, Wildberries, and other targets deep inside Russia, sparking a fuel crisis.
Russia’s defence ministry on Sunday claimed its overnight strikes hit drone warehouses in the Kharkiv region, as well as fuel depots and stores of other materiel belonging to Ukraine’s armed forces at the port of Odesa.
It said its forces had shot down 153 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday, including over Russian-occupied Crimea and the Black and Azov seas.
In Russia’s Belgorod region, authorities said Ukrainian drone strikes damaged 29 apartment blocks and five private houses, as well as administrative buildings and unspecified “commercial facilities.”
Debris from Ukrainian drones also fell on two enterprises and a private home in the Russian city of Novorossiysk, mayor Andrey Kravchenko said on Sunday.
A major fuel terminal is located at Novorossiysk that links Kazakhstan’s oil fields to markets around the world, and which has previously been a target for Ukrainian strikes, as Kyiv looks to suffocate the Kremlin’s energy sector, which it believes to be the financial arm of its invasion.
Additional sources • AP