At least 47 people, including five children, were injured on Sunday when Russian missiles targeted a shopping mall and events complex in the heavily damaged northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to officials. The strikes came after Kyiv on Saturday pounded Russia with one of its most significant drone attacks against Moscow since the full-scale war began, targeting power plants and an oil refinery.
Top Ukrainian officials again pressed their allies and arms suppliers to allow them to deploy Western-supplied missiles deeper into Russia to reduce Moscow’s ability to strike at civilian sites. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram that “all necessary forces of the world must be mobilized to stop the terror.” He urged the “courage” of world leaders to give Ukraine the defensive tools it needs.
The Kharkiv attack targeted a building that housed a shopping center and sports complex, which are frequent targets for Russia. It also shook residential buildings in the city of 1.3 million people. Emergency workers carried injured civilians to ambulances amidst shattered glass and debris. Some residents fled to metro stations as the strikes shook the city.
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Ukrainian officials say the strikes hit several locations in the Saltivskyi and Nemyshlianskyi districts of Kharkiv. They added that the buildings were damaged by Iskander-M missiles launched from Russian territory. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force said it destroyed 158 drones that flew into Ukraine’s airspace overnight, including four that crossed over the border and fired into Ukraine.
Moscow has often used drones and other armed aircraft to target industrial sites in Ukraine that it says are critical to its economic life. However, it has not formally acknowledged the use of drones to bomb civilian areas in Ukraine, which violates international law.
The attacks shook eastern Ukraine as Russian forces made further gains towards a critical town in the Donetsk region where many Ukrainians live and work. Artillery fire rumbled through the streets of Kostiantynivka, a strategically important city that could become a flashpoint for an all-out Ukrainian offensive. It was a new sign of how quickly the situation in eastern Ukraine is shifting.
Russian troops are slowly encircling cities such as Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Sloviansk, which serve as hubs for Kyiv’s war effort. The advances have heightened fears in the hundreds of thousands of residents who live there. They worry that the enemy will raze the city to the ground before Ukraine can retake it with outside military aid. This article was updated on September 1 to reflect a correction that Ukrainian authorities have downplayed the number of civilian casualties and to add details of how the attack was carried out.