Russia pounds Ukraine with aerial strikes, killing eight and wounding dozens

Russian aerial attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight people and injured dozens more, with a fresh guided bomb strike on the northeastern city of Kharkiv early on Monday wounding at least 22 people, including six children, according to local officials.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekov said on his Telegram account that the bomb hit a residential apartment block, destroying two floors of the multistorey building. The strike came less than a day after attacks elsewhere in the country left eight people dead, underscoring the intensifying pace of Moscow's aerial campaign against Ukrainian cities.

Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Ivan Vyhivskyi said three people, including a 16-year-old girl, were killed in air strikes that damaged a children's centre in the northern city of Sumy. The targeting of a facility used by young people drew particular condemnation, though both sides have consistently denied deliberately targeting civilians.

In the southern Black Sea region of Odesa, local authorities described a "massive strike" that killed one person and damaged residential buildings, a shop, a hotel, a medical building and a grain warehouse. The breadth of the damage reflected the mixed civilian and commercial character of the areas hit.

In the capital, Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a woman and two 16-year-olds were injured and hospitalised. The city's administration said the enemy "continues to relentlessly attack the Kyiv region with strike drones," adding that 16 sites had been damaged, including 12 houses, a warehouse and a production facility.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said three people were killed in strikes in the southern Zaporizhia region and that a Russian drone strike had killed one man in Kyiv. In a post on his X account, he said Russia had launched more than 2,200 attack drones, 1,630 aerial bombs and 38 missiles of various types against Ukraine over the past week.

"If Russia were truly preparing for any real steps towards de-escalation, as it claims, particularly to American negotiators, this wave of Shahed terror would not be happening," Zelenskyy said in later comments, referring to the Iran-developed drones Moscow has deployed extensively against Ukrainian targets.

In Moscow, Russia's Ministry of Defence said it had bombed a Kyivstar data centre in Kyiv and another belonging to the Omega Telecom company, claiming that the firms were providing services to the Ukrainian army. The assertion fits a pattern in which Moscow justifies strikes on infrastructure by describing it as military-linked.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Saturday that Moscow intended to continue its military campaign "to the end," a statement that appeared to rule out any near-term halt to the fighting.

Ukraine has meanwhile intensified its own long-range strikes on Russian oil infrastructure. According to local reports, Ukrainian drones struck an oil depot in Russia's Krasnodar region on Monday. The Ukrainian Telegram channel Exilenova+ published footage of a large fire and identified the facility as the Pavlovskaya oil depot. No injuries have been reported so far.

The reciprocal targeting of energy and industrial sites has become a defining feature of the war's current phase, with both militaries seeking to degrade the other's logistical and economic capacity while civilian communities continue to bear the cost.

United States-led talks aimed at ending the war, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, have failed to produce a breakthrough, and the United Nations has highlighted the growing civilian toll. The diplomatic impasse persists even as the humanitarian consequences mount week by week.

The scale of the past week's bombardment — measured by Zelenskyy in the thousands of drones and aerial bombs — illustrates how air power has become central to Russia's strategy, straining Ukrainian air defences and forcing authorities to respond to simultaneous emergencies across multiple regions.

The attacks on Sumy, Odesa, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia spanned Ukraine's north, south, east and centre, suggesting a coordinated effort rather than isolated operations. Emergency services have been stretched by the need to rescue survivors, extinguish fires and clear rubble from damaged residential blocks.

With negotiations stalled and both sides vowing to press on, there is little indication that the coming weeks will bring relief to Ukrainian civilians. The UN's warnings about the rising civilian death toll point to a conflict in which the human cost continues to climb, even as diplomatic efforts remain frozen.