Three people were killed and dozens more were injured in a combined Russian missile and drone attack on cities across Ukraine overnight, officials said on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 40 missiles and almost 580 drones at nine regions of the country overnight, targeting “infrastructure, residential areas and civilian enterprises”.
“Every such strike is not a military necessity but a deliberate strategy by Russia to terrorise civilians and destroy our infrastructure”, Zelensky said, adding that a Russian missile carrying cluster munitions had struck an apartment block in the eastern city of Dnipro.
Ukraine’s Air Force said it had downed 552 drones and 31 missiles launched by Russia overnight, with strikes recorded at 10 locations across Ukraine and debris falling at a further 10 sites.
During the attack, Russia employed its “traditional tactic” of striking its targets with a large number of drones and missiles simultaneously, the Air Force said.
According to Dnipro region Governor Serhiy Lysak, around 40 residential buildings in Dnipro were damaged in Russian overnight attacks. One person was killed, he said, with at least 30 more injured, of whom 12 were hospitalised.
“This is brutal terror against civilians that leaves behind destruction and grief”, Lysak said.
In the Khmelnytskyi region in western Ukraine, Russian strikes around the city of Dunayivtsi destroyed two buildings and damaged around 20 more, killing a man in his 40s, Khmelnytskyi Governor Serhiy Tyurin said.
Vyacheslav Chaus, governor of northern Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, said that a 62-year-old woman had been killed in a Russian drone strike around the city of Nizhyn, while eight more people had been injured.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, meanwhile, said on Saturday that its units had damaged oil refineries in the cities of Saratov and Novokuybyshevsk along Russia's Volga River overnight, as well as a “key transport infrastructure facility” in the Samara region.
The attacks aimed to “reduce the military-economic potential of the aggressor state”, the General Staff said, including by undermining Russia’s “logistical capabilities in the oil refining sector and disrupting the Russian armed forces' fuel and lubricant supply systems”.