KYIV, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Russian air strikes in several Ukrainian regions on Saturday killed nine people, injured dozens and damaged residential buildings and infrastructure across the country, officials said.
The civilian death toll has risen sharply in Ukraine over the past two months as Russia steps up attacks on power plants and other infrastructure. Ukraine has hit energy facilities and warehouses in distant parts of Russia, and both sides have targeted each other’s shipping.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, writing on Telegram, said Russia had deployed nearly 500 drones against Ukrainian targets since early morning.
“Basically, the Russians have expanded the war away from the front, where they have no success, into the economy, and their tactics are as basic as it gets: destroying every site that could help people cope with the conditions of war,” Zelenskiy wrote.
“Russia wants to kill the Ukrainian economy and break our resistance,” Zelenskiy added.
The city council in Kramatorsk, one of Ukraine’s frontline “fortress cities” that Russia wants to capture, said Russian forces attacked private cars, killing three people in three incidents over a 90-minute period. Four people were injured.
“These are not military targets,” the council said. “They are ordinary civilian cars. People were going about their business.”
The governor of Ukraine’s Zhytomyr Region, west of Kyiv, Vitaliy Bunechko, said a Russian strike on a grocery store killed two people in the town of Zvyahel. Bunechko said two petrol stations also came under attack as well as an unidentified “enterprise with foreign investment.”
Earlier, Zelenskiy reported attacks on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih, his hometown.
The governor of Zaporizhzhia Region, Ivan Fedorov, said two people were killed and 11 injured in assaults on Zaporizhzhia and other localities.
Oleksandr Vilkul, head of Kryvyi Rih’s military administration, said two people were killed in overnight attacks on the city by drones and missiles.
The Russian military said its forces hit Ukrainian steel maker Zaporizhstal in the city of Zaporizhzhia, an Interpipe Steel complex in Dnipro and several plants in Kryvyi Rih, including the Northern Iron Ore Beneficiation Works complex.
Reuters could not independently verify accounts from either side.
In Odesa Region, Governor Oleh Kiper said 37 people, including an infant, were injured in a series of overnight attacks. Two people were missing.
In Moldova, on Ukraine’s western border, authorities closed national airspace for nearly an hour after a drone was detected near the border. Seven border crossings were temporarily closed.
Russian drones have regularly entered Moldovan airspace despite official protests. During one instance this week, the departure of Zelenskiy’s aircraft to Norway was delayed.
RUSSIAN STRIKES ON UKRAINIAN PORT
The Russian Defence Ministry said Russia’s forces have maintained their strikes on Ukrainian ports, hitting a cargo ship in Odesa it said was carrying goods for military use.
Earlier in the day, the ministry said its forces struck two cargo vessels overnight in the port of Chornomorsk.
Ukraine’s military said it hit one of Russia’s largest synthetic rubber producers in Togliatti in the Samara region, causing a fire. The Togliattikauchuk plant specialised in the production of synthetic rubbers and fuel additives that are used in fuel for Russian missiles, it said.
Russian regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said industrial facilities in Samara region had been attacked by Ukrainian drones, without specifying which they were or whether they had been damaged, Interfax news agency reported.
Ilya Sukhikh, mayor of the city of Togliatti in Samara region, said several residential buildings were damaged and one person was injured.
In a separate attack, four commercial properties were set ablaze in the city of Taganrog in the Rostov region, local mayor Svetlana Kambulova said, according to TASS.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash and Maxim Rodionov and Alexander Tanas in Chisinau; Editing by Peter Graff, Ron Popeski, Will Dunham, Philippa Fletcher and Chizu Nomiyama)
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