At least six killed in Russian attack on Ukraine, energy sites hit

Russian forces killed at least six people and wounded dozens of others, including two children and a pregnant woman, in attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities, Kyiv announced Tuesday.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the latest bombardment undermined peace efforts and urged allies to step up pressure on Moscow to end the war, which is grinding towards its fourth anniversary.

“Every such Russian strike erodes the diplomacy that is still ongoing and undermines the efforts of partners who are helping to end this war,” he wrote on social media.

A Russian drone barrage killed two people whose bodies were retrieved from rubble and wounded nearly three dozen people in the southern city of Odesa, regional officials said.

The Black Sea city key for Ukrainian exports has been pummeled routinely by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine nearly four years ago.

Ukrainian private energy firm DTEK said Russian forces had inflicted “enormous” damage on one of its facilities in the Odesa region that would take time to repair.

The governor Oleg Kiper said Russia had launched more than 50 attack drones on the region, damaging dozens of residential buildings, a church and schools.

An AFP journalist on the scene saw rescue workers digging for survivors in the debris at a residential building.

The attack wounded at least 32 people, including two girls and a woman 39 weeks pregnant, he said.

A married couple aged 45 and 48 were killed in Sloviansk in the eastern Donetsk region, a key prize for the Kremlin, which has concentrated its firepower there.

Their 20-year-old son survived the attack in the region that the Kremlin claims to have annexed, local prosecutors said.

In a separate drone attack in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, a 58-year-old was killed in their home. A 72-year was also killed in her home by Russian shelling in the southern Kherson region.

Russian drone and missile attacks have recently knocked out power, lighting and heat to millions of Ukrainians across the country.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 165 attack drones overnight, and Ukrainian officials said an infrastructure facility in the western Lviv region was hit.

State gas company Naftogaz said the attack had left one of its facilities on fire in western Ukraine, describing it as the fifth attack of its kind this month.

Russian forces meanwhile are advancing across the front. The Russian defense ministry announced on Tuesday it had captured two more villages in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv.