Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with missiles, drones and glide bombs on Tuesday, killing at least 10 civilians, officials said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow is receiving new military assistance from North Korea for its more than four-year-old invasion.
Zelenskyy said Russian forces used ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea in an overnight attack on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where a company said seven workers at its steel plant were killed and 21 injured.
Three more people, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed by Russian drones and artillery in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said.
In addition to the ballistic missiles, North Korea is preparing to deploy more troops to Russia, Zelenskyy said late Monday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2024, pledging mutual aid if either country faces aggression.
Kim has sent thousands of troops and large supplies of weapons to support Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some experts say the cooperation with Moscow is helping improve North Korea’s military capabilities, while Zelenskyy said the battlefield experience would help Pyongyang threaten other countries in the region.
Ukraine says Russia is increasing its production of ballistic missiles, seeking to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Patriot air defence interceptors capable of stopping them. Kyiv also claims Moscow is preparing to recruit more troops for a new push along the front line stretching 1,250 kilometres (775 miles) across eastern and southern Ukraine.
“Every step Russia takes — increasing ballistic missile production, bringing in North Korean equipment, preparing for mobilisation — all of this shows that Moscow is preparing not for peace, but for escalation,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
In an unusual step, Ukraine’s air force did not say in its daily report how many missiles Russia launched overnight. It was not immediately clear whether the omission was deliberate, and Kyiv officials made no immediate comment.
US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled as Washington grew frustrated with the lack of progress and shifted its attention to the Iran war.
In a further indication that Putin is determined to press on with the invasion, Russia’s highest court on Monday ordered that Yabloko, the only political party opposing the war, be excluded from the ballot in the September 18-20 parliamentary election.
“The Kremlin will not enter serious negotiations or make meaningful compromises on its demands as long as Putin believes that he has a viable military path to achieving his full objectives,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an analysis Monday.
“Ukraine’s Patriot shortages offer Russia an opportunity to cause very serious damage to Ukraine over the coming winter and will therefore contribute to delaying meaningful negotiations and protracting the war,” it said.
Russian forces also struck parts of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, overnight, according to officials. One strike hit the grounds of a children’s hospital, leaving two craters and shattering windows, the State Emergency Service said. Children and medical workers were in bomb shelters and nobody was hurt, it added.
At another location in Kyiv, a Russian strike started a fire in a warehouse that spread across about 1,200 square metres (nearly 13,000 square feet), according to emergency officials.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces overnight struck “military industrial facilities and transport and logistics centres” in Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia with “ground-based precision weapons”.
It said it hit civilian storage facilities housing drones in Kyiv and a metallurgical plant in Zaporizhzhia.
Metinvest, a major Ukrainian mining and metals company with operations in Zaporizhzhia, said seven of its steel plant employees died as staff tried to reach shelters after a warning of an incoming ballistic missile.
The company, which employs tens of thousands of people, said in a statement that the attack damaged its blast furnace and other equipment and forced the plant to shut down.
Russia targeted Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia with Zircon anti-ship missiles and Iskander ballistic missiles, while launching 120 long-range strike drones across the country, Ukraine’s air force said.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defence Ministry said its air defences overnight intercepted nearly 400 Ukrainian drones over 14 regions and Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed from Kyiv in 2014.
Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries, said its logistical facilities in the Voronezh region near the Ukrainian border came under attack and caught fire. It said the fire was extinguished and goods stored there were “largely undamaged”.
Ukraine has repeatedly struck Wildberries warehouses and Russian oil facilities in what it says is a strategy to compel Putin to negotiate an end to the invasion.
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck an oil refinery in the city of Orsk in Russia’s Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan, about 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) from Ukraine, causing a fire.
The refinery, with an annual processing capacity of about 44 million barrels of crude oil, produces petrol, diesel and aviation fuel, among other products. The extent of the damage was being assessed, the military said.
Meanwhile, Romania’s Ministry of National Defence said its navy destroyed two drones drifting in the Black Sea about 90 nautical miles (166 kilometres) from the port of Constanta.
The Gerbera-type drones were neutralised by divers using controlled detonations, and some pieces were recovered, the ministry said, adding that Ukraine said the drones were not theirs.
The United Nations, meanwhile, estimates that more than 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during the war are still being “deprived of their liberty”, with many held incommunicado and on grounds that do not comply with international law.
“Widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment” of both Ukrainian civilian detainees and prisoners of war by Russia are continuing, including sexual violence, said Claudia Fuentes Julio, the UN assistant secretary-general for human rights.
She spoke at an informal meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday to highlight the plight of civilians and soldiers taken following Russia’s invasion.