At least two fatalities occured on Sunday after a Russian 'guided bomb' struck a blood transfusion centre in Kharkiv, after Moscow promised retaliation for a drone attack on its tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea by Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted an image of the attack in Kharkiv's Kupiansk district. "This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression. Defeating terrorists is a matter of honor for everyone who values life," he said.
Zelenskyy further accused Russian forces of carrying out a missile towards an aeronautical company in the Khmelnytskyi region, BBC reported.
The two deaths were among the six people killed in overnight shelling from both sides across Ukraine on Saturday. A 58-year-old woman was killed oin Kharkiv and two other fatalities were reported in Torske and Niu-York areas of the Donetsk region.
A woman in her eighties was killed in Ukrainian shelling, which also set a main university on fire, in Russian-held Donetsk region, as per the city's Moscow-appointed mayor Alexei Kulemzin on Sunday. Moscow’s second-largest airport briefly suspended flights early Sunday following a foiled drone attack near the Russian capital.
Ukraine’s air force informed that Russia launched 70 attack drones and missiles, three of which hit the Starokostiantyniv area, damaging several buildings and igniting a fire at a warehouse.
Earlier, Moscow condemned the Ukrainian “terrorist attack” on a civilian vessel in the Kerch Strait, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. There were no casualties reported among the 11 crew members.
"There can be no justification for such barbaric actions, they will not go unanswered and their authors and perpetrators will inevitably be punished," she wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
The Black Sea is becoming an increasingly important battleground in the war as Ukraine’s naval capabilities grow.
A Telegram post on Saturday by Deputy Chair of Russia's Security Council Dmitry Medvedev implied that Russia would increase its attacks against Ukrainian ports in response to Kyiv's attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea: "Apparently, the strikes on Odesa, Izmail, and other places were not enough for them," he wrote.
(with AP inputs)
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