Russia fired four missiles into the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv overnight, demolishing half an apartment building and killing one resident a day after it unleashed strikes on several cities including the capital Kyiv.
Rescue workers recovered the body of an elderly woman from the rubble of the apartment block early on Tuesday, witnesses said.
As rush hour was underway, passersby walked past a two-storey school, the front of which was torn off by the force of the blast that left a massive crater.
“This is what the barbarian horde does,” said Irena Siden, 48, the school’s deputy director, standing in front of the gutted building as workers began sweeping up the rubble.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said missile strikes on several Ukrainian cities on Monday which targeted infrastructure and a decision to freeze participation in a Black Sea grain export programme were responses to a drone attack on Moscow’s fleet in Crimea that he blamed on Ukraine.
Putin told a news conference that Ukrainian drones had used the same marine corridors that grain ships transited under the U.N.-brokered deal.
Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack and denies using the grain programme’s security corridor for military purposes. The United Nations said no grain ships were using the Black Sea route on Saturday when Russia said its vessels in Crimea were attacked.
Russian missiles rained down across the country on the 250th day of a war that has ground on since Putin launched his invasion on February 24.
Explosions boomed out in Kyiv, sending black smoke into the sky. Russian forces shelled infrastructure in at least six Ukrainian regions on Monday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement on Facebook.
“That’s not all we could have done,” Putin said at the televised news conference, indicating more action could follow.
Ukrainian officials said energy infrastructure, including hydro-electric dams, was hit, knocking out power, heat and water supplies.
Oleh Synehubov, the governor of the northeastern Kharkiv region, said on Telegram that about 140,000 residents were without power after the attacks, including about 50,000 residents of Kharkiv city, the second largest city in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military said it had shot down 44 of 50 Russian missiles. But strikes left 80 per cent of Kyiv without running water, authorities said. Ukrainian police said 13 people were injured in the latest attacks.
For the past three weeks, Russia has attacked Ukrainian civil infrastructure using expensive long-range missiles and cheap Iranian-made “suicide drones” that fly at a target and detonate.
