Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles on Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least four civilians and damaging residential buildings and infrastructure across the country, Ukrainian officials said.
The Interior Ministry said that a Russian missile slammed into a residential building in the central city of Poltava, killing three people and injuring 10, including a child.
The ministry posted pictures on the Telegram messaging app showing the residential building with several top floors smashed and thick columns of smoke rising into the sky. Fire brigades and dozens of rescuers were going through the rubble.
One person was killed and four were wounded in the city of Kharkiv in the northeast as the result of a drone attack, the Kharkiv mayor said.
Officials said that the Russian forces also damaged buildings in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian air defense was also repelling the attacks in Kyiv, but there were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties in the capital, they said.
"Russia's daily attacks on Ukraine are a signal that the aggressor will not stop committing its crimes," Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Telegram.
"Last night and in the morning, Russia shelled Ukraine again: Odesa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia... The terrorist targets civilian infrastructure: residential buildings, educational institutions, cars."
As the war against Russia approaches its three-year mark this month, Moscow has stepped up its air attacks on Ukraine, sending dozens of drones in almost daily attacks.
The strikes in the morning hours on Saturday followed a Russian missile attack on the southern Black Sea port of Odesa the previous evening which damaged the city's historic center.
US President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration has already had “very serious” discussions with Russia about its war in Ukraine and that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon take “significant” action toward ending the grinding conflict.
“We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.”
Trump did not say who from his administration has been in contact with the Russians but insisted the two sides were “already talking."
Asked if he has already spoken directly with Putin, Trump was coy: “I don't want to say that.”
Trump has said repeatedly he wouldn’t have allowed the conflict to start if he had been in office, even though he was president as fighting grew in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv’s forces and separatists backed by Moscow, ahead of Putin sending in tens of thousands of troops in 2022.
