Ukraine pleads for weapons as four civilians killed in deadly Russian air strikes

At least four Ukrainian civilians were killed and more than 30 injured in another big missile and drone attack by Moscow’s forces, amid mounting fears that Russia’s nightly barrages combined with continued delays to new US military aid were weakening Ukraine’s vital air defences.

Heavy fighting continued in several areas of partly occupied eastern Ukraine, as Russian officials said they had received more than 1,000 requests to evacuate children from the border Belgorod region due to frequent shelling from Kyiv’s troops.

Ukraine said Russia fired 51 cruise and ballistic missiles and eight explosive “kamikaze” drones late on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday. Air defence units shot down all the drones and 18 cruise missiles but none of the ballistic missiles, which are particularly elusive due to the speed and trajectory of their flight.

“On the coldest winter morning, [the] enemy left people homeless. Russian shelling damaged homes and infrastructure in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Khmelnytskyi regions. There are dead and injured, including children. This is Ukraine’s reality that can only be changed by weapons,” Olena Zelenska, the country’s first lady, wrote on social media.

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The temperature in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine was not forecast to climb above minus 13 degrees on Monday, and snow and freezing weather are now widespread in the country as it faces daily attacks on its power grid and other infrastructure facilities, 22 months into an all-out Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.

The Ukrainian energy ministry said tens of thousands of residents of hundreds of communities in eight regions of the country had suffered power cuts due to bad weather and the effects of Russian shelling and other military action.

Moscow has launched a series of extremely heavy and deadly air strikes on targets across Ukraine at the turn of the year, while political disputes in Washington and Brussels have blocked approval for tens of billions of dollars and euro in additional funding for Kyiv.

Kremlin-installed officials in the occupied Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine said a Russian warplane dropped a bomb on the area on Monday due to an “emergency release”. No one was hurt but residents were evacuated so the bomb could be defused, they added.

Russia says hundreds of residents of the Belgorod region have evacuated to safer areas further east in recent days to flee frequent cross-border shelling from Ukraine. Officials said 25 people were killed in Ukrainian strikes last week on the regional capital, also called Belgorod, which is about 40km from the frontier.

“Over the past 24 hours, we have received 1,300 applications to send children from Belgorod to country school camps in other regions. I called my fellow governors from the Voronezh, Kaluga, Tambov, and Yaroslavl regions ... We are forming groups and will send [the children] out,” said Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

“There are currently about 300 residents of Belgorod in temporary accommodation centres in Stary Oskol, Gubkin and Korochansky district who have decided to temporarily move,” he added, referring to areas of the region that are relatively far from Ukraine.

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