At least nine people, including two children, were killed in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to regional authorities.
Rescue teams recovered several bodies from the rubble of a residential apartment building that was hit by a ballistic missile during the overnight attack, the regional governor said. Emergency crews continued search and rescue operations as officials assessed the extent of the damage.
The strike formed part of a broader wave of Russian drone and missile attacks that triggered air raid alerts across large parts of Ukraine early Saturday.
Another person was killed in a separate strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said.
Oleg Synegubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said a section of a five-storey residential building in the city’s Kyivsky district was almost completely destroyed in the attack. A nearby house also sustained damage.
In the town of Chuguiv in the Kharkiv region, Mayor Halyna Minayeva said a drone strike hit a house in the city centre, leaving two people injured.
Further south, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, administration head Oleksandr Ganzha said one person was killed and another injured in an attack on the Nikopol district. He added that Russian forces targeted the area around 20 times using drones, artillery and rockets.
In the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine, a Russian drone strike injured a baby, according to regional administration head Ivan Fedorov.
The escalation also prompted neighbouring Poland, a NATO member, to scramble military aircraft in response to the strikes near its border.
“Due to missile attacks by the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory, military aviation has begun operating in our airspace,” Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Command said in a post on X.
Russia has repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, including residential areas and energy facilities, during the course of the war.
In a previous large-scale overnight assault on February 26, Russian strikes injured at least 28 people, according to local authorities cited by the Kyiv Independent.
