Two people were killed and around fifty injured in Russian strikes in Kharkiv on Saturday. Two other people died and twenty-two were injured in Ukrainian missile attack in Crimea the same day. 

Russian strikes left two people dead and around 50 injured on Saturday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and a regular target of bombardment, emergency services announced on Sunday, after a night already marked by a “massive” attack on the country’s fragile energy system.

The attack left “two people dead and 53 wounded, including three children”, the emergency services said after the end of search operations at the site of the strike.

The Russian army struck this town, close to its border, using four “guided aerial bombs”, weapons with devastating force, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had indicated on Telegram. At the time, he reported three dead.

Since the beginning of the month, the Russian army has used 2,400 guided aerial bombs, including 700 in the Kharkiv region alone, according to Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukrainian strike in Crimea kills three
A Ukrainian missile attack Sunday on Sevastopol on the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula also killed three people including a two-year-old child and wounded almost 100, the city’s Moscow-appointed governor said.Sevastopol, a Black Sea port city and naval base on the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, regularly comes under fire from Ukraine but the toll from Sunday’s attack was unusually high.
Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on Telegram that two children and one adult had died. “The number of wounded has risen almost to 100 people,” he added.The governor said Ukraine had launched five missiles which Russian air defences intercepted over the sea but fragments fell onto the shore area and pieces of shrapnel wounded people.

Earlier Sunday, a drone launched by Ukraine on Russia’s southern Belgorod region killed a man, the governor said.

Three Ukrainian attack drones struck the town of Graivoron a few kilometres from the border with Ukraine, said Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, with one hitting a car park near a multi-storey block of flats.

“A peaceful civilian was killed. The man died from his wounds at the spot,” Gladkov wrote on Telegram, while three were wounded.

Energy network in trouble

Overnight, Ukraine’s already troubled energy network came under renewed attack from Russia.

Facilities belonging to Ukrenergo, the Ukrainian operator, were “damaged” in the regions of Zaporijjia (south) and Lviv (west), according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy.

Ukrenergo said two of its employees had been injured and hospitalized in Zaporizhzhzia.

According to the ministry, this is the eighth “massive” attack on Ukrainian power plants in the last three months, resulting in frequent power cuts as the electricity grid struggles to withstand the Russians’ targeted strikes.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that it had carried out a “grouped strike” against Ukrainian energy facilities, “in response” to Kiev’s attacks on its own territory.

Russia, by multiplying its attacks, has destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy capacity, according to Mr. Zelensky.

Kiev is calling on its allies to help rebuild its power grid, a project that requires major investment, and to provide more air defense equipment to counter Russian bombardments.

The Russian occupation authorities in the Zaporizhia region also claimed that Ukrainian attacks had damaged a substation at the nuclear power plant, which is controlled by Russian troops, while assuring that nuclear safety was not affected.

With AFP