KYIV: A Russian drone attack on a five-story apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early Monday killed five people and wounded more than a dozen others, Ukrainian authorities said.
The attack, which took place just before dawn, reduced part of the building to rubble and sparked fires on at least three floors, the region’s governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram.
Russia fired four drones at the building, he said.
Ukraine’s state emergency service posted videos showing rescuers attempting to break through the rubble to reach a trapped resident, while another showed a floor in flames.
“Five people were killed, including a girl aged about one-and-a-half years old,” Ukraine’s prosecution service said.
“At least 18 people were wounded and suffered acute shock, including children.”
The city near the Russian border was also hit hours earlier by a ballistic missile that wounded at least 11 people, Mayor Igor Terekhov said.
Russia also struck the southern Odesa region with drones early Monday, sparking a fire at a fuel facility, regional governor Oleg Kiper said.
The attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his European allies were expected in Washington for talks aimed at ending the three-and-a-half year war.
Just ahead of Zelensky’s arrival in the US capital, US President Donald Trump said Ukraine would not be able to reclaim the annexed Crimean peninsula or enter NATO as part of a peace deal.
Zelensky has repeatedly pushed back against pressure to cede Crimea, the southern peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Russia, which has been advancing for months on the battlefield, has proposed that Ukraine withdraw from the Donbas region in exchange for freezing the frontline in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, where the main cities are still under Kyiv’s control.