Getty ImagesRussia has attacked the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia with five glide bombs, killing at least 15 people including three children, President Volodymyr Zelensky and emergency services have said.
The glide bombs hit residential buildings in the south-eastern city. At least 16 other people were injured in the attack, with more still missing and believed to be under the rubble after the strike on Saturday morning.
Zelensky said 13 other regions had also been hit overnight, adding: “Our responses to [these] Russian strikes will come”.
The Russian attacks happened just hours after President Donald Trump announced a deal to import Russian diesel into the US.
“The ground floor was hit, and the floors above just collapsed,” acting Mayor Regina Kharchenko told Ukrainian television, speaking from the scene.
She said more than 80 workers were involved in ongoing search and rescue operations which are expected to continue throughout the day.
The rescuers regularly stop to listen for any noises made by survivors who could be under the rubble.
Kharchenko said Russia had struck at “our very heart” and “our littlest ones” were among those killed, adding that their deaths were “awful grief for their families. For the city.”
Zelensky has heavily criticised Trump’s diesel deal with Russia, calling it a gift to President Vladimir Putin that amounts to “an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged”.
More recently, in his response to the overnight strikes, he said “Russia interprets any easing of pressure as a signal that it can supposedly continue the war.
“Russia must understand that the war needs to be stopped, and for that, it must feel its losses,” he wrote on X.
Both Russia and Ukraine have stepped up attacks on infrastructure in recent months, as the war between the two countries drags on.
Zaporizhzhia is a major regional centre with more than 700,000 residents. It is located less than 10 miles (16 km) from the front line and is frequently attacked by Russian drones and missiles.
The latest strikes on the city comes amid a sharp increase in the number of Russian attacks that are causing higher numbers of civilian casualties.
On Thursday, at least 33 people were killed in another Russian glide bomb attack on two civilian buses in Kramatorsk, in the eastern Donetsk region.
The day before, 22 people including five children died as a Russian missile hit an apartment block in the town of Pryluky, east of Kyiv.
According to the UN, the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine jumped by 55% in the first eight months of this year.
Russia has also targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure, ramping up attacks every winter since Putin launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.
For its part, Ukraine has attacked Russia’s infrastructure – with the latest being strikes on data centres owned by tech giant Yandex.
