A Russian strike on a children’s hospital in southern Ukraine has wounded at least nine people, authorities have said, shortly after Kyiv targeted Russian energy sites with drones.
Four children were injured in Russia’s strike on the medical facility in Kherson on Wednesday, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as a “deliberate” attack that shows Moscow does not want peace.
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“They could not have been unaware of where they were striking. This was a deliberate Russian attack specifically against children, against medical personnel, against basic guarantees of life in the community,” Zelenskyy said.
Approximately 100 people were inside the hospital at the time of the attack, according to the Ukrainian prime minister. The youngest among the wounded was an eight-year-old boy.
Moscow has not commented on the strike.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russian authorities said Ukraine had sent several drones towards Moscow for the third consecutive night, targeting Russian energy infrastructure and disrupting air traffic.
The Russian defence ministry said on Telegram that its air defence units destroyed a total of 100 Ukrainian drones overnight, including six over the Moscow region, and the rest over 11 regions and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Telegram that its forces had struck Russia’s Mariysky refinery in the Mari El region, another in the village of Novospasskoye in the Ulyanovsk region, and a gas plant in the town of Budyonnovsk in the southern Stavropol region.
Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsiya said three of Moscow’s four airports, and several others around the country, were closed at some point in the night for safety reasons.
Kyiv has kept up long-range drone strikes on Moscow and other Russian regions in recent months, saying the aim is to hit energy, military and industrial assets.
The Ukrainian Energy Ministry also reported strikes on the energy systems, in the Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions. The power company DTEK said nearly 27,000 households in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region were without electricity following overnight Russian strikes.
Separately, Kyiv said its security services had detained a former military instructor from an unspecified European country, accusing the suspect of spying on the Ukrainian army for Russia.
Second nuclear test
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said Moscow has successfully tested a nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone, successfully completing a second test of a new nuclear weapons system in just a few days.
“Yesterday, another test was conducted for another prospective system – the unmanned underwater device ‘Poseidon,’ also equipped with a nuclear power unit,” Putin said in televised remarks while visiting a military hospital treating Russian soldiers wounded in Ukraine.
The Russian leader said there was “no way to intercept” the drone torpedo, which can travel at a speed higher than conventional submarines and reach any continent in the world.
Putin on Sunday oversaw a test of another advanced nuclear-capable weapon – the Burevestnik cruise missile – which he said had an “unlimited range”.
US President Donald Trump called that exercise not “appropriate” and urged Putin to focus instead on ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump last week scrapped a planned summit with Putin in Budapest over what he cast as the Russian leader’s unwillingness to compromise to end the conflict.
Tensions with Russia were also simmering in Europe after Polish Air Force fighter jets intercepted a Russian reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea.
The Ilyushin IL-20 aircraft was detected flying in international airspace on Tuesday without a flight plan and with its transponder switched off, the country’s armed forces said. It was intercepted by two Polish MiG-29 fighter jets and escorted out of the area.
Poland’s airspace was not violated during the incident, the military said.
The EU and NATO member state is one of Ukraine’s closest political and military allies and serves as a key logistics hub for Western military aid to Kyiv.
Poland sees itself as threatened by Russia and is rapidly strengthening its armed forces.
