KHARKIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -At least 43 people were wounded in Russian drone strikes on Ukraine’s second biggest city Kharkiv, officials said on Monday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Kyiv’s allies for more support.
Apartment buildings, a kindergarten and the regional draft office were damaged in two waves of strikes, local and military officials said.
During the second wave, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said six Shahed attack drones had struck the city in northeastern Ukraine within 10 minutes, aimed “at residential streets, at cars, at people”.
He said 43 people in total were wounded in both attacks.
Andriy Prenko, 61, said he was having breakfast in his kitchen when he heard a drone approach.
“I woke my wife and goddaughter up and took them to the bathroom. I stood behind the partition wall and then there was an explosion,” he told Reuters inside his damaged apartment.
“Glass shattered and the windows were blown off. Then there was another one.”
Kharkiv, a frequent target since early in Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, appeared to have been the worst-hit city in Ukraine on a night of Russian drone and missile strikes across the country.
In southeastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, at least 17 people were wounded and dozens of residential buildings and a university building damaged in a morning drone strike, governor Ivan Fedorov said on Monday. One person was killed in the southern city of Odesa, regional officials said.
Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians in air strikes throughout the war. It says it does not target civilians directly although it does target infrastructure it says supports Ukraine’s war effort. Ukraine has also killed a smaller number of civilians in attacks on Russian territory and Russian-held parts of Ukraine.
Zelenskiy urged Kyiv’s Western partners to deliver on pledges to boost Ukrainian defences.
“We are strongly counting on our partners to fully deliver on what we have agreed,” Zelenskiy wrote on X. “Air defense remains the top priority for protecting lives.”
(Reporting by Vitalii Hnidyi in Kharkiv, Lidia Kelly in Warsaw and Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk; Writing by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Peter Graff)
