A three-month-old was among seven people killed after debris from a Russian drone hit an apartment block in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa overnight, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said Saturday.
A further eight people were injured, authorities said.
Odesa regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said the debris came from the Shahed drone that was shot down by Ukrainian air defences.
Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported the region was attacked by eight drones, and seven of them were shot down by air defences.
In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested the Russian attack could have been avoided if Ukraine was not facing delays to weapons supplies.
Zelenskyy said the attacks using the Iranian-supplied Shahed drones “make no military sense” and were intended only to kill and intimidate.
“The world knows that terror can be opposed,” he said. “Delaying the supply of weapons to Ukraine, missile defence systems to protect our people, leads, unfortunately, to such losses.”
Across Ukraine, air defences shot down 14 of 17 drones launched against the country, according to its Armed Forces.
Oleh Syniehubov, Kharkiv’s regional governor, reported Saturday morning that over 20 settlements in the eastern Ukrainian province had sustained Russian artillery and mortar attacks, while highrise buildings in the regional capital, also called Kharkiv, were damaged by a drone attack.
He said there were no casualties, but three people suffered an “acute stress reaction.”
In the partly occupied Kherson region, Russian artillery shelling killed a 53-year-old man on Saturday morning, the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.
St. Petersburg apartment hit
In Russia, a drone crashed into an apartment building in St. Petersburg on Saturday morning, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Six people received medical help after the explosion rocked the building, the agency said, citing the press service of the city’s health-care committee.
The Mash news site said the apartment building was hit by a Ukrainian drone, a claim that couldn’t be verified by The Associated Press.
The site published videos appearing to show the moment the apartment building was struck, showing a strong flash of light engulfing one side of the building and fragments of debris flying into the air. In another video, car alarms are going off.
Russia’s Defence Ministry has not commented on the incident.
In Russia’s Bryansk region bordering Ukraine, an investigative team came under attack by a Ukrainian drone, according to the Russian Investigative Committee.
Two members of the team were wounded and a further two suffered shock, the committee wrote on Telegram.
Two drones were shot down over two villages in the Ukraine-adjacent Belgorod region on Saturday but there were no reports of casualties or damage, according to Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Russia’s wide-ranging invasion of Ukraine recently crossed the two-year mark. Drones have increasingly become important tools of war for both sides as the conflict endures.
