Russian strike on Kharkiv kills six

KYIV: A Russian night-time attack on Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv killed six people and wounded almost a dozen, Kyiv said on Saturday.

The northeastern city 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the Russian border — has seen increased deadly attacks in recent months, more than two years into Moscow’s invasion.

“Six killed and 11 wounded as a result of the enemy’s night-time missile attack on Kharkiv,” the local prosecutor’s office said on social media.

Authorities said the strike hit just after midnight.

“At about 12:20am, the Russian armed forces launched missile attacks on the residential Shevchenkivskyi district of Kharkiv,” the prosecutor’s office said.

It said “high-rise buildings, administrative buildings, dormitories, a kindergarten, shops, cafes and cars were damaged.”

Kharkiv police said Moscow fired two S-300 missiles at the city and then attacked with drones during rescue operations.

“At night, the Russians attacked Kharkiv with S-300. On a city that is sleeping,” Volodymyr Tymoshko of the local police force said on social media.

He said Russia then used “the practice of repeated shelling”.

“When all relevant services were working at the site of the missile hit, enemy drones arrived,” he said, adding that air defence downed then.

Local officials earlier said that the six dead were killed by the drones.

Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov said Russia attacked “while Kharkiv residents were sleeping peacefully”.

He said, “nine residential buildings” were damaged as well as “two kindergartens, two schools” and “several dozen shops”.

President Volodymyr Zelensky decried the “Russian terror against Kharkiv” and called on increased Western air defence deliveries to protect the northeastern region.

The Russian army claimed it had destroyed two anti-aircraft systems in Kharkiv.

Ukrainian police also said there were no casualties in a separate attack on Mala Danylivka, a village on Kharkiv’s northwest outskirts.