KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian airstrikes inflicted more damage on Ukraine on Thursday, with the latest barrage smashing into energy infrastructure, apartment buildings and an industrial site.
At least four people were killed and 11 others wounded in drone and missile strikes around the country, authorities said.
Separately, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced an extension of a four-month-old deal to ensure the safe delivery of export of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers from Ukraine through the Black Sea just days before it was set to expire.
Guterres said in a statement the United Nations is also “fully committed” to removing obstacles that have impeded the export of food and fertilizer from Russia, which is one of two agreements struck between the two countries and Turkey in July. The deals signed in Istanbul are aimed to help bring down prices of food and fertilizer and avoid a global food crisis.
There was no immediate confirmation of the agreement from Russia.
Air raid sirens sounded all across Ukraine early Thursday amid fears that Moscow was unleashing its latest large-scale missile attack as the war approaches its nine-month milestone.
In Kyiv, the city’s military administration said air defenses shot down at least two cruise missiles and five Iranian-made exploding drones.
With the Kremlin’s forces on the ground being pushed back, Russia has increasingly resorted in recent weeks to aerial onslaughts aimed at energy infrastructure and other civilian targets in parts of Ukraine it doesn’t hold.
Ukrainian air defenses this week appear to have had far higher rates of successful shoot-downs than during previous barrages last month, analysts say. The improvement results in part from Western-supplied air defense systems.
But some missiles and drones still get through.
Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said a large fire erupted in Dnipro after the strikes on the city hit an industrial target. Eight people were wounded, the official said, including a 15-year-old girl.
A Russian strike that hit a residential building killed at least four people overnight in Vilnia in the Zaporizhzhia region. Rescuers were combing the rubble for any other victims, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the Ukrainian presidential office.
The Russian strikes also hit Ukraine's southern Odesa region and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks, and
An infrastructure target was hit on the Odesa region, Gov. Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a “massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine.”
Multiple explosions were also reported in Dnipro, where two infrastructure objects were damaged and at least one person was wounded, according to the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.
Thursday's blasts followed the huge barrage of Russian strikes on Tuesday. That was the biggest attack to date on Ukraine's energy infrastructure that also resulted in a missile hitting Poland.
Russia has increasingly targeted Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches. The most recent barrage followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, called the strikes on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post on Thursday.
“Ukraine has already withstood extremely difficult strikes by the enemy, which did not lead to results the Russian cowards hoped for,” Yermak wrote, urging Ukrainians not to ignore air raid sirens.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the extension of the grain deal a “key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”
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Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.