Russian aerial strikes on Monday killed five people and destroyed a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian authorities said, as Moscow intensified its daily drone and missile attacks ahead of winter.
Emergency officials reported that three people were killed and 13 others injured when a residential area in Balakliya, a frontline city in the northeastern Kharkiv region, was hit. Four children were among the wounded.
Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, condemned the attack, saying on social media that “the aggressor destroyed several apartment buildings and a kindergarten. An inhuman attack that cannot be justified.” Photos released by local authorities showed a Soviet-era apartment block with its windows blown out and parts of the structure heavily damaged.
Officials said two more civilians were later killed in a separate strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukraine’s port authority also reported that a gas cargo vessel sailing under a Turkish flag caught fire after Russian drones struck the city of Izmail in the Odesa region on the Black Sea. The attack came just a day after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an agreement with Greece to import natural gas through the Trans-Balkan pipeline, which passes through Odesa.
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Moscow has escalated its targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent months. In October, Russia launched its largest bombing campaign against Ukrainian gas facilities since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, temporarily halting about 60 per cent of the country’s heating fuel production.
Ukraine, in turn, has struck Russian oil refineries, fuel depots and other energy sites, operations it describes as retaliation for Moscow’s sustained bombardment.
Meanwhile, the Moscow-backed governor of occupied Donetsk said around 500,000 subscribers experienced a temporary power outage early Monday following a Ukrainian attack.