Russian drones hit Kharkiv overnight, killing at least six people and wounding 10, officials said, in the latest in a series of increasingly frequent attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city.
The April 6 attack, which occurred around midnight local time, added further to speculation that Russian commanders may be gearing up for an offensive in the coming months to try and capture the city.
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Two days earlier, a Russian drone attack killed four people, including three emergency workers who were hit as they responded to an earlier strike.
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said in a Telegram post that “six people were killed and at least 10 injured as a result of an enemy strike,” which occurred around midnight on April 6. The regional administrator, Oleh Synyehubov, gave similar casualty figures.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the Iranian-made drones hit at least nine high-rise buildings, three dormitories and a gas station.
Photos released by police on Telegram showed several fires in civilian areas, including near a high-rise apartment building.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s military said Russia had fired nearly three dozen drones, and a half-dozen cruise missiles launched from planes as well as a ship in the Black Sea. Kyiv claimed its air defenses destroyed 28 of the drones and three of the six missiles.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, told the news outlet Politico that he saw Kharkiv as the most likely target for any new Russian offensive in May or June.
A day earlier, at least four people were killed and 20 wounded after Russia fired five missiles at the southern city of Zaporizhzhya. Two journalists covering the aftermath of the strikes were among those wounded in the city, which is near the front line in the war with Russian forces.
Ukraine claimed a major success on April 5, saying it damaged or destroyed Russian fighter bombers at a military airfield in Morozovsk in Russia’s Rostov region.
There was no independent corroboration of the claim; one prominent, closely watched Russian war blogger cast doubt on it.
If true, the attack would be among Ukraine’s most successful cross-border strikes.
On the battlefield, Russian forces have made incremental gains and reportedly were on the verge of entering Chasiv Yar, a small city that sits astride a major east-west rail link. Russian war bloggers said troops entered the city’s outskirts as of April 5, a claim that could not be immediately verified.
Ukrainian officials have denied that Russian troops had entered the city. Ukraine’s commander in chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said on April 6 that the Chasiv Yar situation was “particularly difficult” but insisted that Ukrainian defenses were still holding.
Russian troops have been targeting the city after pushing west out of the industrial city of Avdiyivka, which they captured in mid-February after a costly, monthslong campaign.
Capturing Chasiv Yar, which is located on relative high ground, would allow Russian forces to threaten another railway town, Kostyantynivka, and potentially threaten larger, more strategic cities further north, like Kramatorsk or Slovyansk.
Ukrainian forces have been rushing to build trench lines and fortify defenses to slow the Russian westward advances.
Ukrainian and Western observers say Russian forces are suffering major losses of troops and equipment, but continue to grind down smaller, depleted Ukrainian units.