Russian drones struck several regions across Ukraine overnight, killing eight people, including four in Kharkiv, where two residential buildings were hit in a double attack that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called “despicable.”
Three of the four killed in Kharkiv were rescue workers who responded to the first attack and were hit by a second strike, said Governor Oleh Synyehubov on Telegram. At least 12 people were injured, and three of them were in serious condition, he said.
“A despicable and cynical attack, when the rescuers arrived at the scene of the strike, the terrorists attacked again,” Zelenskiy said on X, formerly Twitter.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov published photographs on Telegram showing damage to a 14-floor apartment building, as well as damaged emergency vehicles.
Yevhen Vasylenko, a spokesman for the State Emergency Service, told RFE/RL that rescue workers were attempting to save people trapped in a smaller building nearby when the enemy struck again with drones.
He added that rescuers were able to save one civilian trapped under the debris.
“Usually rescue workers take shelter if there is the threat of a second strike,” Vasylenko said. “But today, a person was under the rubble and needed help, so it was necessary to act immediately.”
Ukraine’s General Staff said 20 drones had struck during the night and into the morning on April 4 and that 11 were disrupted by air defenses.
In the eastern Donetsk region, Russian artillery fire killed two people — a married couple in their 50s — in the town of New York, the regional prosecutor-general’s office said.
Another strike killed a man in a tractor in the Kharkiv region, Synyehubov said, and an aerial bomb killed an energy worker in the Sumy region, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said.
Kyiv is working with “partners to strengthen the protection of our cities and villages,” saying that “strengthening Ukraine’s air defense capabilities directly translates into saving lives,” Zelenskiy said in his message on X.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, speaking in Brussels at a NATO meeting on the alliance’s 75th anniversary, said he didn’t want to spoil the party but his “main message today will be Patriots.”
He said saving Ukrainian lives and the country’s economy and its cities “depends on the availability of Patriots and other air defense systems in Ukraine. We’re talking about Patriots because it’s the only system that can intercept ballistic missiles,” he added.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO allies understand the urgency of providing air defense systems and are reviewing their own stockpiles to provide Ukraine with more of them, including Patriots.
“Several allies have already promised to see what they can deliver. I can’t say more specifically before they make their conclusions, but there are several countries that can make an announcement about such assistance within a few days,” he said.
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Explosions were reported in the southern city of Zaporizhzhya in the morning on April 4. Ukraine’s power generating company, Enerhoatom, said that one of the two power lines at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which is under the control of Russian occupying forces, was disconnected from the grid amid intensive Russian shelling. The Russia-installed administration of the plant confirmed the line was disconnected but provided no details.
The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War wrote on April 3 that Russia could be intensifying drone and missile strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, particularly its energy grid, “to further pressure the Ukrainian command to deploy air-defense systems away from the front.”
Russia denies targeting civilians since the beginning of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, but Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure are regularly hit by missile and drone attacks.
Ukrainian attacks on Russian-controlled parts of southern and eastern Ukraine killed six civilians, Russian-installed officials said on April 4.
Two people died in the southern Kherson region when a drone struck a car. Russian-installed official Andrey Alekseenko said a separate attack killed two members of a repair crew working to restore mobile communications. Another person was in hospital in critical condition.
Russian-installed officials in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, said two people had been killed there by Ukrainian shelling and nine others were wounded.