Russia has launched a wave of missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, killing 16 as Moscow tested the strength of the country’s air defences in intensified fighting, including eight people after hitting a supermarket in the southern city of Kherson.
The strikes early on Wednesday, the latest in a string of attacks over the last week, come after leaked Pentagon documents suggested Ukraine would run out of missiles for its S-300 primary air defence system on Tuesday unless Kyiv could urgently find replacements.
The main supermarket in Kherson was struck at about 11am, and other Russian attacks on the city – including the railway station – and in the surrounding region took the total killed to 16, Ukrainian officials said.
Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister, said emergency services were on the spot assisting, and accused Russia of a criminal act: “We can’t negotiate with the Russian murderers. They must be brought to justice. Or destroyed.”
The majority of the incoming Russian drones – 21 out of 26 Iranian-designed Shaheds – were shot down, Ukraine’s airforce said, including all those aimed at Kyiv. They were fired from Bryansk region to the north-east and the eastern coast of the Azov Sea to the south-east, the airforce said.
Meanwhile, a fuel storage facility near the Kerch strait bridge between Russia and Crimea in the south-west Russian region of Krasnodar was set on fire in the early hours of Wednesday, the regional governor said. Ukraine was almost certainly behind the attack, but it rarely claims responsibility for such incidents on Russian soil.
Attacking Russian logistics could be a prelude to a Ukrainian counterattack, increasingly expected as Kyiv has taken delivery of western tanks and armoured vehicles and has concluded training of troops expected to be involved in an assault aimed at breaking through Russian defensive lines.
A few days earlier an attack set on fire a Russian fuel storage facility in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, in what Moscow said was a Ukrainian drone attack, involving several waves of fixed-wing craft.
Russian missile strikes picked up significantly in the last week as the supposed deadline for the missile shortage nears.
On Friday, 23 were killed, including a baby boy, when two Russian cruise missiles struck a nine-storey residential block in the central city of Uman. A house in the central city of Dnipro was also hit, killing a woman and a three-year-old child.
A missile strike in Pavlohrad, a logistics hub near the eastern Donbas, scene of the fiercest fighting, hit an ammunition dump and railway infrastructure on Monday, wounding 34 and causing a large fire visible from miles away.
The leaked Pentagon paper reported that Ukraine faced a looming shortage of missiles for S-300 air defence systems that protect its smaller cities, and was due to run out on 2 May. A map accompanying the warning indicated that a string of locations outside the capital were at risk of being without defence capabilities.
The document said the immediate problem could be solved by an emergency resupply of the former Soviet standard S-300s or reducing their use, but it was unclear if either had taken place. Russia’s latest round of attacks could be designed to test this out.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the leak of documents was “unprofitable for us” in an interview with the Washington Post published on Tuesday. “It is not beneficial to the reputation of the White House, and I believe it is not beneficial to the reputation of the United States,” he added.
Britain said on Wednesday that the missile strikes of Friday and Monday were the first air-mounted cruise missile strikes for 50 days, with the missiles fired from long-range bombers, and could indicate a change of approach.
The UK Ministry of Defence said the attacks on Monday suggested Russia was engaged in “a possible shift away” from targeting Ukraine’s power network – and instead was “likely focused on Ukraine’s military, industrial and logistical infrastructure”.
A passenger train running from Lviv to Kherson was struck in Kherson station on Wednesday, killing one and wounding three, according to an initial count reported on Ukrainian public television. So far in the 15-month-long war, the rail network has only rarely been hit.
Three electrical workers, repairing the local grid, were killed on the edge of Kherson, the region’s governor added.
