Drone strikes on the Ukrainian city of Odessa overnight injured at least 6 people, including 3 children, as Russia doubled down on a month-long campaign targeting the strategically key region on the Black Sea. File photo by Igor Tkachenko/EPA-EFE
Dec. 31 (UPI) — At least six people, three of them children, were injured in the southern Ukrainian port of Odessa in a Russian drone strike overnight that blacked out parts of the city, cutting off electricity, water and heat, said local officials.
The victims, including a 7-month-old infant, an 8-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, belonged to two families in the same apartment building after Shahed-type drones targeted residential areas, causing structural damage and setting apartments ablaze.
Four buildings were hit in all, with firefighters rescuing at least eight people from one burning high-rise.
Private energy provider DTEK said two of its facilities in the region had been badly damaged, bringing to 10 the number of its plants attacked since the beginning of December.
Across the province, more than 170,000 people were without power, Deputy Energy Minister Oleksandr Vyazovchenko said.
Elsewhere in Odessa Oblast, logistics warehouses were set on fire in a separate strike.
The attacks came amid a sustained aerial campaign targeting port, energy and civilian infrastructure in the strategically key coastal province, which sits on the Black Sea.
The drones menacing Odessa overnight were among 127 that injured at least five other people across Kyiv, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson provinces. The Ukrainian Air Force said it downed or disabled all but 26 of the UAVs.
Over the past day, at least three people were killed by Russian artillery fire in the frontline regions of Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv.
Another three civilians were killed and four were injured in the eastern Donetsk province, where Ukrainian forces are engaged in intense battles with Russian forces to hold onto the remaining territory they control.
The attacks follow claims by the Kremlin of an attempted strike by Ukrainian drones on the state residence of President Vladimir Putin, northwest of Moscow, on Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov vowed the attack, which he described as terrorism, would not go unanswered and warned it would affect the current peace talks.
Kyiv categorically rejected the claim, with President Volodymyr Zelensky calling it a “complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine” and cover for Moscow’s refusal to take steps to end the war.