Russian strikes in eastern and southern Ukraine killed at least three people Wednesday, officials said, as Kyiv asked for more Patriot air defense systems to counter a surge in missile attacks.
Moscow has stepped up air strikes once morest Ukraine in recent weeks, targeting key infrastructure, in retaliation for fatal bombardments in Russia’s border regions.
In Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which has been reeling from power outages due to attacks, aerial bomb attacks and shelling killed at least one person and wounded 19 others, including four children, officials said.
A 12-year-old boy was killed in an attack in the village of Borova in the Kharkiv region on Wednesday evening, according to prosecutors.
President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukraine’s allies to speed up the delivery of fighter planes and air defense systems following the attack.
“Improving Ukraine’s air defenses and accelerating the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine are important tasks,” he said in a statement on social media.
Also read: Ukraine begins building defensive fortifications
“There is no rational explanation why Patriot, which is widely available throughout the world, still does not cover the skies of Kharkiv and other cities,” he added.
The governor of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, which is partly occupied by Russia, said a woman was killed in a drone strike on the village of Mykhailivka.
“A 61-year-old local resident was seriously injured in his own home,” wrote the official, Oleksandr Prokudin, on social media.
Also read: Russian Attack in Ukraine: Zelensky Vows Strong Response following 18 Citizens Killed
And in the southeastern city of Nikopol, officials said artillery fire killed a 55-year-old man, while a ballistic missile attack in the coastal region of Mykolaiv wounded eight people.
Little time
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had launched 13 Iranian-designed attack drones overnight and 10 of them were shot down in the Kharkiv region, the neighboring Sumy region and near the capital Kyiv.
During the briefing, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stressed Western air defenses were critical to protecting Ukrainian cities from Russian fire.
Also read: Zelensky urges the West to beat Russia once more
“The peculiarity of the current Russian attacks is the intensive use of ballistic missiles that can reach targets at very high speeds, leaving little time for people to take cover and causing significant damage,” Kuleba said.
“Patriot and other systems like it are defensive by definition. They are designed to protect lives, not take them,” he said.
Meanwhile, Zelensky was in the northeastern Sumy region bordering Russia, where he met with soldiers recovering from wounds and visited newly built defense lines.
Also read: Zelensky: Russia is making every effort to stop the Ukrainian army
“I checked trenches, bunkers, firing posts and lookouts,” Zelensky wrote in a social media post.
“We are strengthening our defense,” he said.
Ukraine has been forced to prepare defensively in recent months as it faces ammunition shortages due to delays in a $60 billion aid package from Washington.
Also read: Putin: Russian counterattack destroys 160 tanks belonging to the Ukrainian military
The commander of his ground forces warned last week that Russia was amassing more than 100,000 troops in preparation for what might be a major offensive this summer, as Moscow seeks to exploit its advantage on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Russia announced its air defense system had shot down 18 rockets near the border city of Belgorod, which is regularly the target of fatal attacks from Ukraine.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said two people were injured during a hail of gunfire and a subsequent drone strike. (AFP/Z-3)
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