At least five people were killed in missile strikes on the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Kryvyi Rih as Russia launched aerial attacks across the country overnight, local authorities said on Tuesday.
In Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, a Grom-E1 guided missile glide bomb struck a residential building before dawn on Tuesday, destroying it and three other apartment blocks and damaging 19 more, according to Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, who added that it had taken “several hours” to retrieve the bodies of the four people killed in the strike from the rubble.
That attack came just hours after Kharkiv region Governor Oleh Synyehubov reported a separate strike on Kharkiv late on Monday evening that injured nine people and caused significant damage to the city’s Derzhprom building, a constructivist landmark dating from 1928 that is under UNESCO protection pending the approval of its World Heritage Site status.
The strike on a “symbolic landmark of the city known to every Kharkiv resident” was an example of “Russian terrorism”, Synyehubov said, while Terekhov noted that “even Hitler during World War II didn’t do what the Russians have done” to what was the first skyscraper in the Soviet Union.
Earlier on Monday, a missile strike on the city of Kryvyi Rih in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region killed a 39-year-old man and injured 14 others, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysak said.
According to Oleksandr Vilkul, head of Kryvyi Rih’s Defence Council, Russian forces struck a “densely populated apartment complex” in a residential area of the city, destroying a three-storey building and damaging 20 other residential buildings, a medical facility, a school, shops and offices. Ten of those injured in the attack had been hospitalised, he added, one of whom was in critical condition.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the authorities in Kyiv reported a Russian drone strike on a nine-storey apartment building in which six people were injured, the 18th aerial attack on the Ukrainian capital since the start of October.
In its daily briefing on Tuesday morning, the Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia had launched one missile and 48 Shahed attack drones at targets in Ukraine overnight, with Ukrainian air defences downing 26 of the drones. A further 20 drones were “locally lost” and one returned to Russia, it said, adding that Russian aircraft were “continuously launching guided bombs” at targets along the front line.
Commenting on the overnight attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged global leaders not to pursue a policy of “appeasement” towards Russia and Vladimir Putin.
“Every handshake with war criminal Putin boosts his confidence. Every pleasant smile convinces him that he can get away with his crimes”, Zelensky said, calling on countries to “isolate the aggressor and increase the pressure on him until he ceases terror”.