AT least 27 people, including 16 inmates and a pregnant woman, have been killed in Russian air attacks on mostly southeastern Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and regional officials.
The attacks came overnight on Tuesday, a day after United States President Donald Trump set Russia a new deadline of “10 or 12 days” to reach a peace deal in its war on Ukraine or face tough new sanctions, shortening a 50-day deadline he had set earlier this month.
Ivan Fedorov, head of the military administration in Zaporizhia, on Tuesday said Russia carried out eight overnight air attacks on his region alone, hitting a prison near the city of Zaporizhzhia.
“Russia bombed a penal colony near Zaporizhzhia overnight – 16 killed, 35 injured. Civilians continue to suffer. Another blatant war crime,” Fedorov said in English on X.
Zelenskyy said a pregnant woman was among three people killed in a Russian missile attack on the city of Kamianske in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, targeting a hospital.
Also in Dnipropetrovsk, a person was killed and several were wounded in the Synelnykove district, according to Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk military administration.
In a separate attack on the village of Velyka Mykhailivka in the Odesa region on Monday night, a “75-year-old woman was killed. A 68-year-old man was wounded. A private house was damaged,” Lysak said on Telegram.
Russian forces also struck a grocery store in a village in the northeastern Kharkiv region, killing five and wounding three civilians, police were cited as saying by the AP news agency.
Authorities in the southern Kherson region reported one civilian killed and three wounded over the past 24 hours, the AP report said.
Reacting to the developments, Andriy Yermak, a senior aide to President Zelenskyy, wrote on social media: “Russian President [Vladimir] Putin’s regime, which also issues threats against the United States through some of its mouthpieces, must face economic and military blows that strip it of the capacity to wage war.”
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia had launched 37 drones and two missiles overnight, adding that its air defence systems had downed 32 of the drones.
