Russian aerial strikes on Monday killed five people and destroyed a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine, authorities have said, as Moscow continues to escalate its drone and missile attacks ahead of winter.
According to Ukraine’s emergency service, three people were killed and 13 wounded in a strike on a residential neighbourhood in Balakliya, a frontline city in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Four children were among the injured.
Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, condemned the attack, describing it as “inhuman” and unjustifiable. “The aggressor destroyed several apartment buildings and a kindergarten. An inhuman attack that cannot be justified,” she wrote on social media.
Images shared by local authorities showed a partially destroyed Soviet-era apartment block, with its windows shattered and debris scattered around the courtyard.
Later in the day, another Russian strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region killed two additional civilians, the local governor confirmed.
In the Odesa region, a gas cargo vessel sailing under a Turkish flag caught fire after Russian drones struck the port city of Izmail, according to the Ukrainian port authority. The incident came just a day after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an agreement with Greece to import natural gas via the Trans-Balkan pipeline, which passes through Odesa.
The latest wave of attacks follows Russia’s massive bombing campaign in October—the largest against Ukrainian gas facilities since the start of the 2022 invasion—which halted around 60 percent of the country’s main heating fuel production.
Kyiv has continued targeting Russian oil refineries, fuel depots, and other energy installations, describing the operations as retaliation for Moscow’s relentless strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Moscow-backed governor of occupied Donetsk reported that around 500,000 subscribers temporarily lost power early Monday following a Ukrainian strike.
