Russian strikes across Ukraine kill 3 as Kyiv struggles to counter escalating attacks

Russian strikes killed three people and wounded at least eight across Ukraine, officials said Friday, as Ukraine struggles to counter escalating Russian bombardments that have killed more than 50 people over the past three days.

One man was killed, and five people were wounded in Russian strikes on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region in the morning hours, said Mykhailo Semikin, the head of the regional military administration. He said the attacks hit residential areas and that a child was among the wounded. Another man was killed in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, Svitlana Onyshchuk, head of the regional military administration, reported.

A woman was also killed in a Russian attack on warehouse facilities in the district of Bucha in the Kyiv region, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said on Telegram. Her body was found while clearing rubble and fighting a fire at the site, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration, said Friday. Three people were wounded there.  Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than 4 and a half years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

Elsewhere, a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s eastern Belgorod region killed two people on Friday, the area’s regional emergency headquarters said. Regional governor Alexander Shuvayev said that 12 people had been wounded in Ukrainian strikes.

Russian attacks have killed dozens of civilians across Ukraine over the past three days using a mix of ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones. On Thursday, a Russian guided bomb exploded next to public buses filled with passengers in eastern Ukraine, killing 30 people. A day earlier, a Russian missile strike killed 22 people, including five children, in the northern Ukrainian town of Pryluky.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Moscow will likely escalate daily attacks as winter approaches, putting pressure on Ukraine as it prepares for winter and hitting the infrastructure keeping its war-battered economy afloat.

Recent Russian targets have included energy systems, key industries, railways, post offices, shopping centres, telecom networks, gas stations and grain exports.

The Ukrainian leader held a meeting with military officials and Government members on Friday focusing on Ukraine’s energy and air defence needs.

“Unfortunately, there is a lot of damage to the power grid and electricity transmission facilities,” he wrote on Telegram. “Repairs are going on around the clock.” Zelenskyy appealed on Thursday for additional defence support from NATO countries, saying in an online post: “It is important that support in words takes concrete form in new packages for Ukraine’s defence.”