A Russian air attack overnight on a residential area in Kharkiv killed three people, including a toddler, and injured 17, Ukrainian authorities said on Monday, as the United States presses Kyiv to take a quick deal to end a war Moscow started.
A drone attack killed the two-year-old boy in Ukraine’s second-largest city early on Monday, after a ballistic missile strike the previous night, Oleh Synehubov, the governor of the wider Kharkiv region, said on messaging app Telegram.
The number of the injured from the Kharkiv attack was “continuously increasing”, Synehubov added.
Also on Telegram, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said two more were killed and 17 injured in both attacks, among them six children aged from six to 17.
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“A woman has just been rescued from under the rubble: she is alive,” Terekhov said in a post early on Monday, warning that more might be trapped under the rubble.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Monday that Russia continued to kill civilians despite peace efforts ahead of the meeting between the Ukrainian and American presidents.
“Russia is a murderous war machine that Ukraine is holding back. And it must be stopped through transatlantic unity and pressure,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on X about Russia’s Monday attack on Kharkiv.
Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine near the border with Russia, has been the target of regular Russian drone and missile attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The earlier ballistic missile strike on the city shattered about 1,000 windows, Synehubov said. Some residents had to be evacuated, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Telegram.
Reuters witnesses saw medics attending to residents on a street and rescuers inspecting damage in residential buildings.
Two people were injured in Russia’s strikes on the adjacent region of Sumy that also damaged at least a dozen homes and an educational institution, authorities said.
“The enemy continues to deliberately target civilian infrastructure in the Sumy region — treacherously, at night,” Oleh Hryhorov, the head of the regional administration, said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s air force downed 88 drones and recorded hits in 25 locations across six regions of the country, according to a statement posted by the air force on Telegram.
Reuters could not independently verify the weapons used by Russia. There was no immediate comment from Moscow. Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strikes, but thousands of people have died, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
US president Donald Trump, who hosted Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday for talks aimed at ending the war, has urged Kyiv to make a deal with Moscow, stating, “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not”.
Meanwhile, the death toll from an unexplained blast last week at a production facility in Russia’s Ryazan region has jumped to at least 20 dead with another 134 people injured, local emergency services said on Monday.
Pavel Malkov, governor of the Ryazan region that lies just southeast of Moscow, said on Friday that the incident had been triggered by a fire breaking out inside a workshop at the factory.
But it was unclear from Russian media reports what caused the fire or what exactly the factory was producing. Official Russian sources gave no details beyond efforts to find and treat the injured.
“As of August 18th, 20 people died as a result of the emergency incident,” the local emergency service headquarters said in a post on Telegram.
“There are 134 injured, of which 31 patients are in hospitals in Ryazan and Moscow, while 103 patients are undergoing outpatient treatment.” - Reuters
