At least four people were killed in attacks by Russian troops on several regions of Ukraine on Thursday, local authorities said, adding that power infrastructure, residential buildings and an industrial area were hit.
About a dozen people were injured in the attacks, they added.
Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine earlier in the day. In Kiev, the city’s military administration said air defenses shot down at least two cruise missiles and five Iranian-made drones.
With Kremlin forces being beaten back on the ground, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeted airstrikes against power infrastructure and other civilian targets in several parts of Ukraine in recent weeks.
Analysts say Ukraine’s air defenses appear to have had far more successful kills this week than during previous attacks last month. The improvement partly stems from air defense systems provided by the West, but some missiles and drones still manage to get through Ukrainian defenses.
Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said a huge fire broke out in Dnipro after attacks in the city hit an industrial target. Eight people were injured, the official said, including a 15-year-old girl.
At least four people were killed in a Russian attack that hit a residential building overnight in Vilnia, Zaporijia region. According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the Ukrainian presidential office, rescue teams were searching the rubble for other victims.
Russian attacks also hit the Odessa region of southern Ukraine and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks.
Infrastructure was hit in the Odessa region, Governor Maksym Marchenko said on the Telegram social network, warning of the threat of a “massive deluge of missiles over the entire territory of Ukraine”.
According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, several explosions were also reported in Dnipro, where two local infrastructure targets were damaged and at least one person was injured.
Authorities in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.
This attack follows another on Tuesday, which also dropped a rocket into Poland, killing two.
Russia is increasingly targeting Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches. The latest attacks come after days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its greatest military successes – last week’s recapture of the southern city of Kherson.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, called attacks on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers,” in a paper published this Thursday on the Telegram social network.
“Ukraine has already endured extremely difficult attacks by the enemy, which have not led to the results expected by the cowardly Russians”wrote Yermak, urging the Ukrainians not to ignore the sirens of the air raids.
On the other hand, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced a four-month extension of the grain agreement to ensure the safe supply of Ukraine’s export grains, food and fertilizers through the Black Sea just days before this pact expires.
Guterres said in a statement that the United Nations was also “fully committed” to removing obstacles to the export of food and fertilizer from Russia, which is one of two agreements signed in July between the two countries and Turkey. have been reached. The agreements signed in Istanbul aim to help lower food and fertilizer prices and prevent a global food crisis.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the extension of the grain deal “an important decision in the global fight against the food crisis”.
There was no immediate confirmation of the deal by Russia.
Source: DN
