The aftermath of a missile strike on a high-rise building in Sumy, northeastern Ukraine, 17 November 2024. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine

Eleven people including two children were killed and another 89 were injured on Sunday night in a Russian missile strike on the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, the country’s Interior Ministry has announced.

A Russian ballistic missile struck a nine-storey residential building, according to Artem Kobzar, Sumy’s acting mayor. The local authorities said that Russian forces then fired another ballistic missile at critical infrastructure within the city shortly after midnight, causing power cuts.

Commenting on the initial attack on Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky extended his condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims, adding that “the criminals responsible must be punished for killing innocent people”.

Sumy lies directly across the border from Russia’s southwestern Kursk region, where the Russian military is currently attempting to drive out the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which managed to establish a foothold there following a surprise cross-border incursion in August, one of the aims of which was to end the continuous attacks on the Sumy region.

After the Biden administration lifted its restrictions on Kyiv’s use of US-supplied ATACMS missiles to hit military targets deep inside Russian territory on Sunday, The New York Times said that initial Ukrainian strikes would likely target Russian and North Korean forces in the Kursk region.