KHARKIV -- Russian military strikes hit high-rise apartment buildings in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, leaving dozens wounded in a second consecutive nighttime attack this week.
The bombs fell late on September 21 on the district of Shevchenkivskiy, north of the city center, Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synyehubov said. Nine residential buildings sustained varying degrees of damage, he added.
Twenty-one people were wounded, including an 8-year-old, according to Synyehubov and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.
Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, also said that 60 residents had been evacuated from one building that was heavily damaged. An 8-year-old and two 17-year-olds were among the wounded, he added.
The overnight strikes came after another attack on Kharkiv late on September 20 that wounded 15 people, including 10- and 12-year-olds.
According to Ukrainian officials, KAB-type aerial glide bombs were used in the attacks, a retrofitted Soviet weapon that the Russia military has used in eastern Ukraine.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and 30 kilometers from the Russian border, has been targeted frequently by the Russian military since Russian President Vladmir Putin launched his country’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in February 2022.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned the latest attacks on Kharkiv and repeated his call for more weapons from Kyiv's Western partners to defend against Russian strikes.
"Ukraine needs full long-range capabilities, and we are working to convince our partners of this," he wrote on social media.
Further south, a Russian drone attack killed two people on September 21 in the city of Nikopol, the regional governor said.
In the eastern town of Kurakhove, one of the focal points of Russia's slow advance through the industrial Donetsk region, one person was killed in a Russian artillery strike, regional prosecutors said, according to Reuters.
And local authorities in the Sumy region said Russian aircraft struck energy infrastructure in the town of Shostka.
Sumy has been another frequent target of Russian attacks and lies opposite Russia's southern Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion last month.
Elsewhere, the Ukrainian Air Force reported on September 22 that air-defense systems had shot down 71 of 80 Russian attack drones launched overnight.
It said six more drones were neutralized by electronic warfare. The air force also said Russia had launched two guided missiles from occupied parts of Ukraine’s Luhansk region. It did not say what happened to the missiles.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air-defense units had destroyed 15 drones that Ukraine launched overnight.
