Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
Three people were killed and at least 60 more injured in a Russian drone strike on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv in the early hours of Wednesday morning, local authorities have said.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said that Russia struck the city with 17 Shahed attack drones just after 00:30 am local time, causing “direct hits on multi-storey buildings, private homes, playgrounds, businesses and public transport”.
Two men, aged 65 and 66, and a 47-year-old woman were killed, Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said, while nine children aged between 2 and 15 were among the 60 people injured.
Investigators were working at the scene to “properly record and investigate the war crimes committed by Russian military personnel”, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.
Terekhov added that several people had been rescued from burning buildings by firefighters after Russia had attacked “ordinary objects of peaceful life … that should never be targeted”.
“We are holding on. We are helping each other. And we will definitely endure,” Terekhov said. “Kharkiv is Ukraine. And it will not be broken”.
Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent days following a series of drone strikes by Ukraine on Russian airfields at the start of June, codenamed Operation Spider’s Web, that damaged around 40 military aircraft.
On Saturday, Russia launched 53 drones, four aerial bombs and one missile at Kharkiv in combined strikes that left three people dead and another 18 injured.
Ukraine’s Air Force said on Wednesday morning that Russia had targeted the country’s Kharkiv, Donetsk and Odesa regions with 85 drones and one ballistic missile overnight, with strikes recorded in 14 locations.
Meanwhile, independent Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian drones struck a gunpowder plant in the city of Kotovsk in Russia’s central Tambov region in the early hours of Wednesday — the second time the plant has come under attack in the past two weeks.
Acting Tambov Governor Yevgeny Pervyshov said that an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on Kotovsk had been “repelled”, but that falling drone debris had caused a fire to break out at an unspecified location.
While stressing that the fire had been extinguished by Wednesday morning and the situation was “under control”, Pervyshov warned local residents against sharing footage of drone strikes online as doing so would “directly help” Ukraine, which he said was “attempting to strike at our enterprises and civilians”.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had intercepted a total of 33 Ukrainian drones over five Russian regions and annexed Crimea overnight, including five over Tambov.