KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian ballistic missile carrying cluster munitions has struck a residential area of a city in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people, including two children, and wounding 84 others, officials said Monday.
The two children who died in the strike on Sunday evening were a nine-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Six injured children are in critical condition, the report said.
The attack damaged fifteen buildings, including two educational institutions, the Public Prosecution Service said. A search and rescue operation continued on Monday, on the eve of the war’s 1,000-day milestone.
Sumy is located 40 kilometers (24 miles) from the Russian border.
Also on Sunday, US President Joe Biden for the first time authorized Ukraine’s use of US-supplied longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia, after extensive lobbying by Ukrainian officials.
The weapons are likely to be used in response to North Korea’s decision to send thousands of troops to support Russia in the Kursk region, where Ukraine carried out a military incursion last summer.
It is the second time that the US has allowed the use of Western weapons on Russian territory within certain limits, after allowing the use of HIMARS systems, a shorter-range weapon, to halt Russian advances in the Ukrainian region Kharkov in May.
Ukraine’s initial reaction to the long-awaited US decision was remarkably restrained.
“Nowadays there is a lot of talk in the media about us getting permission for the actions in question. But strikes are not made with words. Such matters are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
Earlier, Zelenskyy said Russia had launched a total of 120 missiles and 90 drones in a large-scale attack on Ukraine, including Sumy. Russia has deployed several types of drones, he said, including Iranian-made Shaheds, as well as cruise, ballistic and aircraft-launched ballistic missiles.
The attack, which targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, came as fears grow over Moscow’s intentions to destroy Ukraine’s energy generation capacity before winter.
The Ukrainian defense shot down 144 of a total of 210 air targets, the Ukrainian Air Force reported.
“The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine. Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris. In Mykolaiv, as a result of a drone strike, two people were killed and six others were injured, including two children,” Zelenskyy said.
Two more people were killed in the Odesa region, where the attack damaged energy infrastructure and disrupted power and water supplies, local governor Oleh Kiper said. Both victims were employees of Ukraine’s electricity grid operator Ukrenergo, the company said hours later.
The combined drone and missile attack was the most powerful in three months, according to the head of Kyiv’s military city administration, Serhii Popko.
According to Popko, one person was injured after the roof of a five-storey residential building in the historic center of Kiev caught fire.
A thermal power plant owned by private energy company DTEK was “severely damaged,” the company said.
Russian attacks have strained Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since Moscow’s large-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, leading to repeated emergency power cuts and nationwide blackouts. Ukrainian officials have routinely urged Western allies to strengthen the country’s air defenses to counter attacks and enable repairs.
Russia’s Defense Ministry acknowledged on Sunday that a “massive” missile and drone attack had been carried out on “critical energy infrastructure” in Ukraine, but claimed that all targeted facilities were linked to Kiev’s military industry.
Although Ukraine’s nuclear power plants were not directly affected, several electrical substations on which they depend suffered further damage, the UN nuclear energy watchdog said in a statement on Sunday. Only two of Ukraine’s nine operational reactors continue to generate power at full capacity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Russian military said on Monday it intercepted and destroyed 59 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions overnight. Two were shot down over the Moscow region surrounding the Russian capital, and three others over the neighboring Tula region. A total of 54 drones were destroyed over the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions on the border with Ukraine, according to a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drones shot down outside Moscow were heading towards the capital.
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