Russian strikes cut power in much of Ukraine’s Kharkiv
KHARKIV, Ukraine: Russia fired a salvo of missiles at Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv overnight, officials said Wednesday, hitting a railway yard and knocking out power to more than 18,000 households.
Kharkiv governor Oleg Synegubov said Russian forces had fired S-300 missiles, an antiaircraft weapon now often repurposed to hit civilian targets in Ukrainian cities.
The Kharkiv regional emergency service said the blasts, which were audible in the city centre at around 9pm (1800 GMT) on Tuesday, destroyed an electrical transformer and hit a workshop.
No casualties were reported, but the regional energy company said 18,500 customers in the Shevchenkivsky, Kholodnogirsky and Novobavarsky districts of the city had lost electricity.
Kharkiv residents in these districts woke to find their power cut and commuter trams marooned without current in the streets.
The Ukrainian presidency said six people had been wounded in shelling in the broader Kharkiv region.
At the railway yard, AFP reporters found fire crews extinguishing a fire left by at least two strikes that demolished an office, ripped up tracks and destroyed parked wagons.
“It doesn’t make any sense. They fire randomly. They were pushed back to the border, but they continue to shoot,” complained 34-year-old welder Mykhayil.
The strike came a week after a similar barrage hit a nearby rail freight yard and residential blocks, and raised fears that Moscow, frustrated in its bid to occupy Kharkiv, is targeting civilian sites.
“It’s very scary to be here,” admitted engineer Antonina Musiyenko, 42, as railway workers cleared rubble and dug charred paper records out of the ruins of an office attached to a locomotive workshop.
“The air raid sirens are always working and you’re just waiting for something to strike, but you don’t know exactly where it will hit,” she said.
Kharkiv, a mainly Russianspeaking Ukrainian city less than 40 kilometres from the border, came under assault from the first hours of Russia’s Feb 24 invasion, but held out despite artillery and missile fire.
This month’s lightning Ukrainian counter-offensive drove the Russian forces from the outskirts of the city, back to the border and away to the east, almost to the limit of the Kharkiv administrative region.