No end in sight

Over 60 people killed by Russian strikes on Ukraine in under a week

Russian army strikes on several Ukrainian cities have killed dozens of civilians and left hundreds wounded in under a week.

The single deadliest attack of the war this year was in the city of Poltava in central Ukraine, where a Russian missile strike on a military educational facility on Tuesday killed 53 people and left more than 270 injured, according to the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry.

Seven people, including a mother and her three daughters, were killed by Russian shelling in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Wednesday. More than 50 people were injured, with five adults in a serious condition.

Six people, including a baby, were killed and 97 were injured in Russian airstrikes on the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine last Friday.

The photographs show the aftermath of these strikes.

Commenting on the death of a mother and her three daughters, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said on Telegram on Wednesday that “in the centre of Europe, Russia exterminates whole families of Ukrainians. Russians are killing our children, our future”.

The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed the strikes on Poltava on Wednesday, stating that the Russian army had “delivered a high-precision strike on the … Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in the city of Poltava, where … various AFU units, and unmanned aerial vehicles operators involved in attacks on civilian targets, were being trained”.

In a post on X on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky quantified the scale of Russia’s recent strikes on Ukraine.

“Just in the past week, Russia has launched over 160 missiles of various types, 780 guided aerial bombs, and 400 strike UAVs of different kinds against our people,” he said.