Daytime drone strikes once again jolted Ukrainian cities on Tuesday, as Russia stepped up a pattern of attacks in broad daylight that authorities said killed at least one person and left many others wounded.
In Kharkiv, a drone hit a shopping centre, killing one person and injuring others, local prosecutors said.
Regional governor Oleg Synegoubov published photos on Telegram showing the blackened interior of a department store, with parts of the roof and a wall ripped away.
Further south, officials said three people were hurt in Kherson after a strike hit a local bus, while another three were wounded in Odesa.
In Kyiv, AFP journalists reported hearing multiple explosions as air raid alerts sounded several times in the morning.
They also saw crowds forced to wait in the metro system, which does not cross the capital’s Dnipro River during air raids.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said four people were injured, including two taken to hospital. In a separate statement, he said a drone had crashed onto a road.
Video circulating on social media showed thick plumes of smoke rising from one of the morning’s impact sites.
Russia is hitting more tagets like the warehouse in the Boryspil district of Kyiv during daylight hours
Russia also pressed ahead with its regular overnight strikes, officials said, extending attacks across multiple regions.
“The enemy has been attacking the Kyiv region all night with strike drones and ballistic missiles,” said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv region, adding that warehouses were among the targets.
In the northeastern Sumy region, authorities said Russian attacks killed one person and wounded four others.
“The enemy attacked civilian transportation in broad daylight while people were simply going about their business,” said Yaroslav Shanko, head of the Kherson city administration.
President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed calls for Ukraine’s partners to provide additional ballistic missile defence packages, arguing the systems are needed to blunt the strikes.
In a morning update, Ukraine’s air force said its forces had shot down seven ballistic missiles, one anti-ship cruise missile, and nearly 90% of the drones.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, the regional governor said one person was killed and two others injured in the shopping centre attack.
In Kyiv, Klitschko said falling debris landed in at least two districts, damaging a school and blowing out windows at a healthcare facility. He added that two people were injured in a daytime attack.
Outside the capital, two people were wounded after strikes damaged warehouses and private homes, the regional governor said.
Reuters TV footage showed a large plume of smoke rising over a warehouse in the region. In central Poltava, the regional governor said air attacks hit industrial sites and an energy facility, cutting power to seven settlements.
In Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, a steel-and-mining centre, three people were wounded when a missile struck an industrial facility. In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, three more people were wounded after strikes hit an unspecified production facility.
Emergency responders at the site of the Russian drone strike in the Boryspil district
Officials in the Odesa region said an hours-long attack damaged infrastructure, an educational facility and a multi-storey building. Three people were wounded.
Russia’s defence ministry said it struck steelworks in Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia, an oil refinery in the Poltava region, logistics centres around Kyiv and three ports in the Odesa region.
In a spillover from the barrage, six Russian drones entered the air space of neighbouring Moldova, local authorities said, prompting President Maia Sandu to “strongly condemn this intimidation”.
One drone was found on Moldovan territory.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has continued launching hundreds of long-range drones almost nightly at targets inside Russia.
Russian defence ministers said air defences downed 267 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions, illegally annexed Crimea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
After Ukrainian drones destroyed huge warehouses in recent months belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, the latest attacks have shifted toward Ozon, the country’s second-largest e-commerce company.
Ozon said its logistics facilities in Orenburg and Ufa were attacked, but neither site caught fire.
Russia threatens Britain over missile support for Ukraine
Britain and the UK have agreed to supply blueprints for the Storm Shadow missile to Ukraine
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Moscow could strike British military targets inside and outside Ukraine if Ukraine uses British missiles to hit Russia.
Maria Zakharova urged Britain to retreat from what she called London’s hostile posture on Ukraine, warning it could push the war into an “entirely new level”.
At the same Moscow briefing, she said Britain and France were “playing with fire” by transferring sensitive missile technology to Ukraine.
Zakharova said the UK was “one step away” from becoming legally complicit in what she described as “terrorism” against Russian civilians, and she warned of “catastrophic consequences” if Britain did not change course.
“We have repeatedly warned that any British military installations and equipment in Ukraine and beyond its borders could be targeted in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory carried out using British weapons,” she said.
“We propose that the British leadership once again carefully analyse the situation and immediately, in the most resolute and unequivocal manner, abandon the hostile, aggressive line, which can only … create the risk of the conflict escalating to an entirely new level.”
Britain announced on Monday that it would allow Kyiv access to classified technology to begin producing its own Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, which are capable of striking deep inside Russia.
France has already agreed to license the technology for the European missile.
Russian forces 4km from Sloviansk, army chief claims
‘The offensive is proceeding at an unabated pace on all fronts’ – Valery Gerasimov (L) said
Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, visited Russian troops on the Ukrainian front, the defence ministry said, as Moscow insisted it intends to capture more towns and villages in eastern Ukraine.
In defence ministry video, Gerasimov said Russian forces were advancing toward the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk and praised what he called their “successes”.
“The offensive is proceeding at an unabated pace on all fronts,” he said. “There are four kilometres left to the eastern suburbs of Sloviansk.” AFP said it could not independently verify the claim.
Russia has maintained its maximalist position that Ukraine must hand over the remainder of the east, and the Kremlin has tasked its forces with taking full control of the Donetsk region.
Sloviansk and nearby Kramatorsk remain the last major hubs under Ukrainian control in Donetsk, part of the so-called fortress belt — a chain of heavily fortified defensive lines Kyiv has built since 2014.
Sloviansk has carried symbolic weight for Ukraine since 2014, when pro-Russian separatist forces held it for about three months before Kyiv retook the city.
