Four killed in strike on Kharkiv postal facility as Russia bombards Ukraine’s energy infrastructure

Four people were killed and six more were injured in a combined Russian missile and drone strike on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, as Moscow continued its bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, the Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday.

The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said the Russian military had launched a “massive” strike on a postal logistics centre on the outskirts of Kharkiv, destroying buildings and causing several fires to break out. Emergency workers rescued 30 people, including two from under the rubble of one of the buildings, it added.

According to the Kharkiv region Prosecutor’s Office, Russia carried out a double-tap strike on the facility, first attacking it with two missiles before following up with four drones. Elsewhere in Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said a separate drone strike had sparked a fire at a children’s medical facility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had attacked the postal centre “with no military purpose whatsoever”, and that Russian airstrikes targeting energy facilities across Ukraine had also caused “extensive destruction of residential and civilian infrastructure”. 

“Every such strike against life is a reminder that support for Ukraine cannot be stopped” Zelensky said, adding that missiles for air defence systems were “needed every day, and especially during winter”.

The authorities in Kyiv said Russia had launched ballistic missiles at the capital overnight, causing energy company DTEK to introduce emergency power outages in Kyiv and the nearby city of Bucha. DTEK added that an overnight Russian attack had caused “significant” damage to one of its thermal power plants, though it did not specify which one.

In the port city of Odesa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, two waves of Russian attacks damaged residential buildings, a hospital, a kindergarten and a school in the city centre, injuring five people, Odesa Military Administration head Serhiy Lysak said. DTEK said overnight airstrikes on two of its facilities in the region had left some 47,000 households without power.

In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, two people were hospitalised due to their injuries following overnight Russian strikes, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said.

Ukraine’s Air Force said Russian forces had launched a total of 18 ballistic missiles, seven cruise missiles and 293 attack drones at the country overnight.

Following reports of an overnight Ukrainian attack on a drone manufacturing plant in the city of Taganrog in Russia’s southern Rostov region, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Tuesday confirmed it had struck the facility, causing damage it said would reduce Russia’s drone production capacity and “weaken the Russian aggressor's ability to strike civilian targets in Ukraine”.