A day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to warn of more attacks inside Russia, two Russian missiles crashed into a residential building and university complex in his hometown, Kryvyi Rih, on Monday, killing at least six people and injured dozens of others, Ukrainian officials said.
The unusually pointed warning from Ukraine’s leader followed a series of apparent Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, suggesting that Kyiv is trying to bring the war home to the Russians. But Russian weapons proved more deadly for civilians, as they were again on Monday at the steelworks in the central Ukrainian city.
Serhii Lysak, the head of the region’s military administration, said six people were killed and 75 wounded. More than 20 of those were hospitalized, he wrote a Telegram message.
Shortly after the attack, Mr. Zelensky posted video from the scene showing smoke pouring from a building with a gaping hole where several upper floors were. Hours later, he said a child and his mother were among the dead, and that Russia appeared to have used ballistic missiles in the strike.
Last month, a Russian strike killed at least 11 people in Kryvyi Rih, which is about 100 miles from the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Russian forces also shelled 130 front-line towns and villages on Monday, with some of the heaviest fire directed at the southern port city of Kherson on the west bank of the Dnipro River, Ukrainian officials said. Four people were killed and 17 others were injured in the shelling in the city, Andriy Yermak, the head of the president’s office, wrote on Telegram.
The Russians also continued their bombardment of the southern port city of Kherson throughout the day, killing at least four people, according to Ukrainian officials.
The head of the Kherson regional military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said the injured included utility workers and volunteers helping people still recovering from floodwaters that engulfed their homes after Russia blew up a dam upstream in June.
Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, told national television that Russia was trying to escalate its attacks on the west bank of the river despite ammunition shortages, saying, “lack they’re still in shells.”
said Ms. Humeniuk said Ukrainian strikes on key Russian logistics routes — especially bridges and roads linking the occupied Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine and Russia — are making it difficult for Moscow to resupply and -redeploy its occupation forces.
Kyiv has increasingly pledged to bring the war closer to the Russians, largely abandoning a policy of strategic ambiguity about attacks inside Russia that it has maintained for much of the war.
In his late-night speech on Sunday night, after two drones hit buildings in the center of the Russian capital, Mr. Zelensky was the clearest sign yet that Ukraine sees such strikes as a major war tactic.
“Gradually, war is returning to Russian territory – to its symbolic centers and military bases,” he said. “And it’s an inevitable, natural, and completely fair process.”
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said Monday that strikes in Moscow and across Russia should be expected as long as Russian forces are waging an unjust war.
“Until the invaders leave Ukrainian territory, until the criminals are punished, there is no safe place in the aggressor state,” said Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence.