Four dead and 11 injured in overnight Russian strikes on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region

At least four people were killed and 14 more were injured in overnight Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials said on Monday.

Russian forces carried out a missile strike on a densely populated residential area in the city of Balakliya, southeast of the regional capital Kharkiv, killing three people and injuring 13 more, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said.

A separate Russian drone strike late on Sunday evening caused a series of fires in the Kharkiv region village of Velykyi Burluk, killing one person and injuring another, the State Emergency Service added.

Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia had launched two Iskander ballistic missiles and 128 attack drones at the country overnight, with air defences downing 91 of the drones. Both the missiles reached their targets, as did 32 of the drones, it added.

The State Emergency Service also reported fires at energy and port facilities following Russian overnight drone strikes on the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, on the Black Sea. 

Oleksiy Kuleba, Ukraine’s minister for communities and territorial development, said engineers were working to restore power at one of Odesa’s ports after the strikes, which he said damaged port equipment and several civilian vessels docked nearby.

He added that some 30,000 people had been left without water and some 20,000 people without heating on Monday morning after Russian attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, much of which is occupied by Russian forces.

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said Russia had damaged energy facilities in the Donetsk, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions overnight, with repair work ongoing on Monday morning.

Denis Pushilin, the Kremlin-installed head of what Russia calls the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, blamed the attacks on the region on Ukrainian forces, and said that the Russian authorities were working to restore power to 500,000 people in the city of Donetsk and the surrounding cities of Makiivka, Horlivka and Yasynuvata.

The strikes came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in Paris, where he is due to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron to finalise a deal on what he called a “significant strengthening” of Ukraine’s air defence capabilities. 

According to Reuters, that deal could include not only the Mirage fighter jets promised by Macron last month, but also more advanced Rafale models.