Russia launches missile, drone barrage against Ukraine after promise of retaliation
Zelenskyy calls reported strike on blood transfusion centre a war crime
Russia launched a multi-wave overnight attack on Ukraine with 70 air-assault weapons, including cruise and hypersonic missiles as well as Iranian-made drones, Kyiv's air force said Sunday, and at least 10 missiles appear to have made their way through air defences.
Ukraine's State Emergency Service released footage showing what it said was a blaze at an agricultural grain elevator for corn waste in Starokostiantyniv, in the Khmelnytskyi region, between Kyiv and Lviv to the west of the country. It said the blaze was caused by one of the Russian attacks and one worker was wounded.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the location or date the video was filmed.
Serhiy Tiurin, deputy governor of Khmelnytskyi region, said a military airfield in Starokostiantyniv was among several targets and a fire had broken out at a grain silo.
At the end of July, Russia targeted the Starokostiantyniv military airfield in the Khmelnytskyi region.
Serhiy Tyurin, deputy head of the region's military administration, said three waves of missiles hit the Starokostiantyniv area, damaging several buildings. The strike may have been intended for the city's airfield, officials said.
Moscow unleashed cruise missiles from aircraft over the Caspian Sea, following through on its promise to retaliate for a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea late Friday, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine also struck the Russian port of Novorossiysk with drones earlier the same day.
Russia's Federal Agency for Marine and River Transport posted on Telegram that although the drone blasted a hole in the tanker's engine room, there were no casualties among the 11 crew.
6 fatalities in Kharkiv region
Two of the six fatalities in Ukraine overnight Sunday occurred during a Russian airstrike in Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region, according to the head of the local regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov. Another four people were injured.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a guided bomb hit a blood transfusion centre in Kharkiv region late Saturday.
"This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression," Zelenskyy wrote on social media.
In Ukraine's eastern Kupyan region, Russian missiles ignited a forest fire, officials said on social media. Russian attacks in the Donetsk region villages of Torske and Niu-York killed two people, local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko posted on social media.
Ukrainian shelling in Russian-held Donetsk killed a woman in her eighties, the city's Moscow-appointed mayor, Alexei Kulemzin, said Sunday. The shelling also set the main building of a university on fire, according to the Moscow-installed head of the illegally annexed region, Denis Pushilin.
Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said the blaze caused the building's roof to collapse but there were no casualties.
Moscow's Vnukovo airport, 15 kilometres southwest of the Russian capital, briefly suspended flights Sunday morning after a drone was shot down in the airspace around the city. The attack was one of four strikes on the Russian capital in the space of a month, spotlighting Moscow's vulnerability as Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its second year.
The drone was destroyed by air defence systems in the Podolsk region of the Moscow suburbs, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
With files from The Associated Press