Strikes hit Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv as the Kremlin warned Ukraine will pay for recent cross-border attacks.
Russian bombardments across Ukraine killed at least seven people and wounded more than 50 others on Monday, hitting apartment buildings, offices and a science academy in Kyiv, officials said.
In the Kyiv region, drone strikes killed four people and wounded eight, according to officials. An afternoon strike hit the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, killing a woman and damaging the cultural landmark. Russian forces also struck gas stations and a pharmaceutical company in Kyiv, while Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces targeted two data centers in the capital.
In central Dnipro, a drone hit an office center during working hours, killing three people and injuring at least 12, local authorities said. A strike on a nine-story apartment building in the northeastern city of Kharkiv wounded 43 people, including 11 children, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. In the northern Chernihiv region, four people, including two teenage girls, were hurt in a Sunday evening drone strike on a residential area. Russia’s Defense Ministry also reported hitting a Nova Poshta postal distribution hub in Odesa, along with cargo ships in the Black Sea and the port of Chornomorsk.
Diplomacy stalls as fighting spreads
The strikes followed a week of diplomatic efforts at the United Nations to start talks on ending Moscow’s 4½-year-old invasion. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that chances for a quick settlement were bleak after recent Ukrainian attacks. “Ukraine will have to pay a price for the actions that have taken place in recent months,” Peskov told reporters. “That is happening right now.” On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the U.N. General Assembly that “Europe is doing everything it can to thwart peace talks in which the Trump administration is interested,”
On the front line, Ukraine’s Third Army Corps said Monday it recaptured 20 square miles from Russian troops in the Donetsk region under an offensive code-named Operation Vivaldi. The unit said it used ground robots and converted Soviet-era BTR-60 armored personnel carriers into exploding kamikaze vehicles to breach Russian positions. Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t comment on the claim, but said its forces captured the villages of Novovodiane in Donetsk and Ulanove in the northern Sumy region.
Across the border, Ukrainian long-range strikes hit two defense plants in Russia’s Tula and Voronezh regions and oil facilities in the Krasnodar region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Krasnodar emergency officials said drone strikes started fires at three infrastructure facilities, while the Russian Defense Ministry reported shooting down 254 Ukrainian drones overnight.
