Three dead in attack in Kharkiv, Russia launches new missile attack on Ukrainian energy facilities

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian bomb attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killed at least three people on Saturday afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Another 25 people were injured in the attack, in which a guided aerial bomb hit a residential building, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Syniehubov said 16 people, including two children, were hospitalized.

Russia continues to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russia has launched a new missile and drone attack in a nighttime assault on Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said on Saturday, damaging energy facilities in the southeast and west and injuring at least two workers.

Ukraine is battling a new wave of power outages after Russia launched three months of relentless attacks on energy infrastructure, knocking out half of the country’s electricity generation capacity. Russia fired 16 missiles and 13 Shahed drones in its eighth major attack on energy facilities overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said.

The Ukrainian air defense intercepted 12 of the 16 missiles launched by Russia and all 13 drones, the Air Force said.

State-owned power grid operator Ukrenergo said the lightning strikes damaged equipment at plants in southeastern Zaporizhia and the western Lviv region.

According to regional governor Ivan Fedorov, two energy workers were injured in Zaporizhia when a fire broke out at an energy plant.

With no major changes reported along the 1,000-kilometer-long front line and a recent advance by Kremlin forces in eastern and northeastern Ukraine achieving only minor success, both sides have now targeted infrastructure and sought to limit the other’s ability to fight in a war now in its third year.

Moscow’s nighttime attack on Zaporizhia and Lviv was preceded by Ukrainian military strikes on three oil refineries in southern Russia on Friday night.

The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses had destroyed five drones over the Sea of ​​Azov and the western regions of Bryansk and Smolensk. One man was killed in an attack on the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, said the region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov.

The governor of the partially occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine said on Saturday that five people were killed and seven injured in Russian attacks the previous day.

In the Russian-controlled part of the region, Moscow-appointed governor Denis Pushilin said three people were killed and four injured in an attack by Ukrainian forces on Saturday morning.

A police officer was killed in a Russian drone attack on a checkpoint in the partially occupied Kherson region, the Ukrainian National Police said.

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