Russian strikes killed at least four people and wounded more than 30 others across Ukraine early on Monday, spurring evacuations from damaged housing blocs and sending civilians to bomb shelters.
Moscow has launched a series of large-scale drone and missile attacks as ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine — led by the United States — grind to a halt.
An AFP reporter in the eastern city of Kharkiv region saw civilians with their belongings being evacuated from a residential building damaged during the attack and others sheltering with neighbours and pets in a basement.
Two people were killed in the eastern Sumy region and one in the Black Sea region of Odesa in the south, emergency services said on social media.
One man was killed in the southern Kherson region, the governor said.
More than 40 people were wounded, most of them in the eastern regions of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, officials said, including in a late-morning attack on the industrial city of Zaphorizhzhia.
The Ukrainian air force said Moscow had launched 101 drones across the country and four missiles. Seventy-five of the drones were downed, it added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Kyiv’s allies to step up their deliveries of air defence systems after the attack.
The head of Zelensky’s office meanwhile urged more robust sanctions on Russia to stop it from acquiring weapons parts abroad.
“The West must realize: Russia’s growing weapons production only brings closer the day when they’ll be used not only against Ukraine,” the official, Andriy Yermak wrote on social media.
Russia invaded Ukraine more than three years ago and has set out maximalist demands for a ceasefire, including that Kyiv would hand over four territories partially controlled by Moscow’s army.
In Russia, the defence ministry said that it had shot down 91 Ukrainian drones overnight, including eight in the Moscow region, with the majority of the rest in regions bordering Ukraine.
On Friday, Russia carried out its largest drone and missile barrage on Ukraine since it launched its invasion in February 2022, sending 530 drones and around a dozen missiles on Kyiv in an attack that killed at least two people.
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© Agence France-Presse
