Russian strikes killed 15 people, injured another 42 and damaged a number of warehouses in the region surrounding Ukraine’s capital Kyiv overnight, the emergency service said.
The attack was the latest in a series of large-scale Russian ballistic missile strikes that have become near-routine this summer.
Kyiv’s military administration said the barrage damaged residential buildings and several warehouses: “The enemy is once again deliberately striking civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Ukraine has a limited stockpile of interceptor missiles for the US-made Patriot systems, the sole air defence system in its arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles, making large volleys like Wednesday’s hard to stop, even as Ukraine has stepped up deep strikes on Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
In the wider Kyiv region around the capital, 14 people were killed and 27 wounded, with fires at multiple locations in Brovary, Bucha and Fastiv districts, Ukraine’s emergence service said.
Large warehouse fires burned in the city of Brovary and the villages of Velyka Dymerka, Kvitneve and Peremoha.
A fire involving vehicles at an enterprise in Fastiv district was extinguished.
In Bucha district, crews battled a warehouse fire in the village of Chaiky after putting out a separate fire at a logistics facility in Sofiivska Borshchahivka.
Firefighters tackle a blaze after Russian missiles hit a warehouse in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: Dan Bashakov/AP
In the capital, one person was killed and 15 were wounded, and emergency crews extinguished all fires sparked by the strikes in the Obolonskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, Holosiivskyi and Desnianskyi districts, the Kyiv City Military Administration said.
Russia said it hit logistic hubs and supply centres in Kyiv and the surrounding region, arguing that those were used for military purposes.
It has also hit three cargo vessels near the Black Sea port of Odesa, the Russian defence ministry said on Telegram.
Ukraine accused Russia of committing a war crime after a video was released showing a drone chasing down a street vendor and exploding in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.
Police said the man in his 50s survived but suffered shock and shrapnel injuries, having dived under the vehicle for shelter.
“Today, many were shocked by yet another video of the drone ‘safari’ Russians are carrying out against civilians in Kherson,” said Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president. “We must act and support life in ways that force Russia to think seriously about peace rather than expanding the range of its drones.”
Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said the attack happened on Tuesday.
Sybiha said the attack formed part of a deliberate Russian campaign to intimidate civilians. “This barbaric Russian war crime in Kherson demands international condemnation and justice, but thousands of similar crimes never come to the public eye.” He said the “sadist” pilot of the Russian drone would have known the target was a civilian.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones struck logistics centres across Russia including several run by online retailer Wildberries, local officials said.
Wildberries said its warehouse near St Petersburg caught fire with no casualties.
In the Tver region, about 180km northwest of Moscow, a Wildberries facility was damaged by drones in the rural area of Emmaus.
In the Moscow region, a drone attack on the city of Chekhov set a warehouse alight and killed five people in the Novoselki industrial zone.
Drones damaged a Wildberries warehouse near Krasny Bor in north-western Russia, wounding one person. – Reuters/AP