At least four people have been killed and nine injured, including a child, in a drone attack on an apartment building in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday morning that Russia targeted Sumy with an Iranian Shahed drone, while his military said a total of 81 drones were launched overnight, damaging businesses and homes.
“A terrible tragedy, a terrible Russian crime. It is very important that the world does not pause in putting pressure on Russia for this terror,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.
The military said 37 of the drones were shot down, including in Sumy and near the capital, Kyiv, and 39 others did not reach their targets, without elaborating on what happened to the five remaining drones.
Local authorities added that five apartments and more than 20 cars were damaged in the attack.
Sumy Governor Volodymyr Artyukh posted a video on Telegram in front of a crane and piles of rubble. He said emergency services were sifting through rubble and pulling residents out.
The attack on Sumy comes after a Ukrainian drone attack on western Russia that killed a woman and her child.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod border region, said on social media another child and his father were injured in the attack.
Russia’s defence minister also reported that Moscow downed 104 Ukrainian drones over Kursk and Bryansk.
Elsewhere, in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa, officials said Russian drones targeted the port town of Izmail, where a grain warehouse, a hospital and two residences were damaged.
At the same time on Wednesday, the ministry said it was continuing its advances in the village of Novoyelizavetivka in the Donetsk region.
The ramped-up attacks come weeks before the war’s third anniversary on February 24.
