Deadly barrage pounds Kharkiv

Russian rockets slammed into residential buildings in Kharkiv before dawn Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, killing at least six people and wounding at least 11 in the latest assault on Ukraine’s second-largest city.

“Russian terror against Kharkiv continues,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said in a statement. “It’s crucial to strengthen the air defense for the Kharkiv region. And our partners can help us with this.”

Ukraine’s air defenses have come increasingly under strain since U.S. military support stopped flowing into the country more than six months ago, and future assistance remains uncertain amid Republican resistance in Congress to a $60 billion aid package.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA., has hinted that he soon would bring the issue of military aid for Ukraine to a vote in the House, but he also said he might tie the issue to unrelated matters such as domestic energy policies that could complicate its passage.

At the same time, Russia has replenished and expanded its stockpile of missiles, guided bombs and attack drones and is intensifying its bombardments across the country.

Zelenskyy said last week that “in March alone, Russian terrorists used over 400 missiles of various types, 600 Shahed drones and over 3,000 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine.”

Kharkiv, second in population only to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and only about 25 miles from the Russian border, has been hit particularly hard.

Russian forces tried and failed to encircle and capture the city in the first months of the war, which began in February 2022, and they were driven out of most of the Kharkiv region during Ukraine’s counteroffensive that fall.

As Russia has increased its aerial bombardments of Kharkiv, it has for the first time deployed powerful guided bombs to hit the city.

The use of the modified bombs represents a new and potentially deadly development against which Ukraine has little defense, Ukrainian officials and military analysts said.

There are a number of variations of the weapons, known as glide bombs, but essentially they are powerful gravity bombs modified with a set of wings and guidance systems to allow them to be dropped by fighter-bombers out of the range of Ukrainian air defense systems.

More than 20,000 buildings have been destroyed in Kharkiv since Russia launched its full-scale invasion

In the most recent overnight attack, Russia hit residential neighborhoods with a barrage of S-300 missiles, which were fired from Russian territory and can reach Kharkiv in less than a minute, officials said.

Nine residential buildings, a kindergarten, a cafe and a gas station were among the buildings damaged, Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv military administration, said in a statement.

The attack came less than 48 hours after Russian drone strikes in Kharkiv on Thursday killed four civilians, including three emergency workers.

Despite the daily attacks and blackouts, there has been no major exodus from the city, which has a population of 1.3 million.