Five killed and 32 injured in overnight Russian drone strike on Kharkiv

Five people were killed and a further 32 were injured in a Russian drone strike on Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv on Thursday night, Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov has announced.

According to the Kharkiv region Prosecutor’s Office, Russian drones struck multiple residential buildings at around 10pm local time on Thursday. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said that the strikes had caused four separate fires covering over 600 m², with rescue operations continuing into Friday morning.

Posting images of the destroyed buildings on Telegram, Syniehubov accused Russia of “continuing its war against Kharkiv’s civilian population”.

A Russian artillery strike on the city of Kostyantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Thursday night left one person dead and injured three more, the Donetsk region Prosecutor’s Office said.

The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia had launched a total of 78 drones at four regions of Ukraine overnight, 42 of which were intercepted, while a further 22 failed to reach their targets.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that its air defence systems had downed 107 Ukrainian drones over 10 Russian regions as well as over the Sea of Azov overnight, including three around Moscow, where flights to and from three of the city’s airports were temporarily halted.

Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of western Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, said that one person had died after a Ukrainian drone strike on the village of Belaya Beryozka, calling the attack an example of the “inhumane crimes Ukrainian terrorists continue to commit against peaceful civilians”.

While Russia and Ukraine both endorsed a US-brokered energy infrastructure ceasefire last month, both sides have since repeatedly accused each other of violating that agreement.

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that while Vladimir Putin was still “counting on US President Donald Trump to deliver an acceptable peace deal” to end the war in Ukraine with the “concessions he wants”, Russia was preparing to continue fighting should talks fail.

In a presidential decree issued on Monday, Putin ordered that some 160,000 new recruits be called up for compulsory military service in this year’s spring draft, the largest number for 14 years.