Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities injured dozens of civilians on Monday, as Kyiv reportedly used US-supplied missiles to hit an airfield and a powerful air defence system inside Russia, defying warnings from the Kremlin that such attacks crossed a dangerous “red line”.
At least 23 people were hurt when a Russian S-400 missile landed in the centre of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, and 11 were wounded in a rocket attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa. Five people were injured in a drone strike on the nearby city of Mykolaiv and a 13-year-old boy was hurt in a drone attack on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
“The occupiers continue to attack regions across Ukraine ... Since last evening alone, Russia has launched nearly 150 strike drones, aerial bombs and missiles, targeting over 10 of our regions,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“These Russian strikes on Ukrainian lives can be stopped – with pressure, with sanctions, by blocking the occupiers’ access to the components they use to manufacture the means of this terror, by providing arms packages for Ukraine and with a determination that must be unwavering.”
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After refusing for many months, Washington and London gave Ukraine permission last week to strike military targets inside Russia using US Atacms ballistic missiles and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
In response to the first such strikes, Moscow warned that western powers were becoming directly involved in Europe’s biggest war since 1945, and its military hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro with an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile that was used for the first time in combat. The Kremlin claimed to have a stock of such missiles and warned that it would use it again if “provoked”.
Footage posted on social media on Monday showed large explosions at Khalino airfield in Russia’s Kursk region, which Russian military bloggers said were caused by an Atacms strike. Russian online media also reported that Ukraine destroyed an S-400 system and killed several military officers in another Atacms attack in Kursk.
Ukraine’s military did not confirm the incidents but said it had attacked “important sites” in Russia’s Kursk, Bryansk and Kaluga regions. An oil depot and a factory making instruments for the Russian military were reportedly damaged in Kaluga.
Russian officials said an unspecified industrial facility in Kaluga had been set on fire and that eight ballistic missiles, six guided bombs and 45 drones fired by Ukraine had been shot down.
Russian troops are grinding forward in eastern Ukraine and have retaken about half of about 1,500sq km that Kyiv’s troops seized in August in Kursk region, where Moscow said on Sunday it had captured a former British soldier who was fighting for Ukraine.
In a video released by Moscow, the man gives his name as James Scott Rhys Anderson and says he joined Ukraine’s international legion after serving in a signal regiment of the British army from 2019 to 2023.
Meanwhile in Georgia, another European Union candidate country where Russia is trying to regain influence, a potential constitutional crisis was brewing after the country’s president and opposition parties boycotted the first session of the new parliament in protest at allegedly rigged elections.
The Georgian Dream party – which critics say is pro-Russian – claimed to have extended its 12-year rule with a landslide victory in last month’s vote, but President Salome Zourabichvili, opposition leaders and many civil society groups say the ballot was a sham.
Georgian dream deputies defied thousands of protesters and entered parliament on Monday, but Ms Zourabichvili and her allies say it was unconstitutional because only the president has the right to open a new session after elections.
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