Russia launches missile strikes on Kharkiv apartments in Ukraine wounding 21 people

Russia launched new strikes in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv that hit high-rise apartment buildings, leaving at least 21 wounded in a second consecutive nighttime attack, authorities said.

The bombs fell on Saturday night in the district of Shevchenkivsky, north of the centre of Kharkiv, which is the second-largest Ukrainian city, local Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

Residential buildings sustained varying degrees of damage, including 16- and nine-story buildings, he added. Kharkiv’s city council said that 18 buildings were damaged.

The wounded included an eight-year-old child, according to Syniehubov and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said that 60 residents were evacuated from one of the buildings, a high-rise that was hit directly.

Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022.

Late on Friday, 15 people, including children ages 10 and 12, were wounded when Russian air strikes hit three Kharkiv neighbourhoods, Terekhov said.

Ukrainian officials said that KAB-type aerial glide bombs - a retrofitted Soviet weapon that has for months laid waste to eastern Ukraine - were used in both attacks.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the strike and urged Kyiv’s Western allies to send more weapons to help it “protect lives and ensure safety.”

“Ukraine needs full long-range capabilities, and we are working to convince our partners of this,” Zelenskyy said on X, preparing to kick off a busy week in the United States shoring up support for Kyiv in the war.

Russia also launched 80 Shahed drones and two missiles at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said. Ukrainian defences shot down 71 drones, and another six were lost on location because of electronic warfare countermeasures, the statement said.

Farther south, a 12-year-old girl and a woman died after a Russian drone struck a passenger car in the city of Nikopol, local Governor Serhii Lysak reported. Two others, including a four-year-old child, suffered wounds.

In the eastern Donetsk region, a Russian air strike on Sunday morning struck homes in the city of Sloviansk, trapping a woman under rubble and wounding two of her neighbours, regional prosecutors reported.

In the same province, two miners died and one other person was injured late Saturday after Russian forces shelled a mine west of the city of Pokrovsk, local Governor Vadym Filashkin and Ukraine’s Energy Ministry reported.

Pokrovsk and Sloviansk have both been key targets for Russian forces as they continue their grinding push westwards aimed at capturing the entirety of Ukraine’s industrial east.

In southern Ukraine, a Russian drone strike on Sunday morning wounded two civilians in the city of Kherson, regional authorities said. Hours later, police reported that Russian attacks wounded at least four more people elsewhere in the province.

Other Russian drone attacks Sunday damaged energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s central Poltava region and the northern city of Shostka, officials reported.

Around 10,000 residents have left the nearby border town of Hlukhiv because of intensified Russian shelling, around a third of its prewar population and including 70 per cent of the town’s children, the local military administration said on Sunday.