Three killed in intense shelling across Ukraine

Three people have died during a night of air strikes and intense shelling across Ukraine, officials said on Sunday, as Kyiv’s military exchanged fire with Russian occupation forces.

Two people were killed and four more were injured following a Russian air strike in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, said the head of the local regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a guided bomb had hit a blood transfusion centre in the area’s Kupyan district late on Saturday.

“This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression,” Mr Zelensky wrote on social media. “Defeating terrorists is a matter of honour for everyone who values life.”

A woman in her 80s was also killed by Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-held Donetsk, the city’s Moscow-appointed mayor Alexei Kulemzin said on Sunday.

The attack also set alight the main building of the M Tugan-Baranovsky University of Economics and Trade, said the Moscow-installed head of the illegally annexed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin.

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said the blaze caused the building’s roof to collapse, but there were no casualties.

Alongside shelling in the country’s east, the Ukrainian air force reported on Sunday that Russian forces had launched 70 attack drones and air and sea missiles overnight.

The bombardment reportedly included cruise missiles launched from aircraft over the Caspian Sea and Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 strike UAVs.

Serhiy Tyurin, deputy head of Ukraine’s Khmelnytsky region military administration, said Russian missiles had damaged several buildings in the area, injuring one and sparking a fire in a warehouse.

In Ukraine’s eastern Kupyan region, a 55-year-old man was admitted to hospital after missiles struck houses and farm buildings.

Officials said that the attack also ignited a forest fire.

In Russia, Moscow’s second-largest airport briefly suspended flights following a foiled drone attack.

Vnukovo airport, which is around 15km (nine miles) south-west of the Russian capital briefly suspended flights on Sunday morning after a drone was shot down in the airspace around the city.

The Russian defence ministry said the drone was destroyed by air defence systems in the Podolsk region of the Moscow suburbs.

Authorities in Ukraine, which generally avoids commenting on attacks on Russian soil, did not say whether it launched the raid.