Six dead in Russian blitz on Ukraine

KYIV:

Russia fired a wave of drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing at least six people including two children and cutting power to tens of thousands, officials said Sunday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks, which also wounded a dozen other people, showed Moscow was aiming to "inflict harm" on civilians, announcing that Kyiv had beefed up its air defence in response.

Russia has rejected US calls to halt its nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, instead pushing forward with its ground assault while renewing its campaign of strikes against Ukraine's energy grid.

Kyiv said Saturday it had deployed special forces to the eastern city of Pokrovsk, where it is under pressure from an intense Russian assault involving thousands of troops.

"Russian forces attacked the Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions. Six people died, including two children," the office of Ukraine's prosecutor general said on Telegram.

The children were two boys aged 11 and 14, Ukraine's human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said.

Russia's attacks cut power to the entire eastern Donetsk region, as well as almost 58,000 households in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, the regions' governors said.

Kyiv says the strikes on energy infrastructure are primarily aimed at wearing down the country's civilian population, a charge Russia denies.

Ukraine under pressure

The overnight attacks came a day after Ukraine's top military commander announced he had deployed special forces to the eastern city of Pokrovsk, where Kyiv is under pressure from a Russian army thousands strong.

Hundreds of Russian soldiers have infiltrated the logistics hub, Kyiv said earlier this week.

Others are closing in on its outskirts in a pincer-shaped movement, according to battlefield maps published by the Institute for the Study of War.

The city's capture would provide a major propaganda boost for the Kremlin, which has rejected calls for a peace deal on the current front lines.

"A comprehensive operation to destroy and displace enemy forces from Pokrovsk is under way," Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky said in a post on Facebook on Saturday.

Videos published on social media purported to show helicopters flying towards the city, while another purportedly taken by a Russian drone showed figures scrambling from a helicopter that had landed in a field.

Russia fired more missiles at Ukraine in overnight attacks during October than in any other month since at least the start of 2023, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Ukrainian air force.