3 dead, several hurt in attack on Odesa: Kyiv

Odesa, June 10

Russia fired missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday, killing three civilians in the Black Sea city of Odesa and striking a military airfield in the central Poltava region, Kyiv authorities said.

The attacks, in which a 29-year-old was also killed in the northeast Kharkiv region according to officials, were the latest in a spate of overnight strikes that Russia has intensified as Kyiv sets its sights on a major counter-offensive.

The Air Force said the attacks involved eight ground-launched missiles and 35 strike drones. Air defence units managed to down 20 drones and two cruise missiles, it said.

“As a result of the air fight, debris from one of the drones fell onto a high-rise apartment, causing a fire,” the southern military command’s spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said of the attack on Odesa.

Firefighters battled overnight to put out the fire in the 10-storey block in a residential area of the city, footage released by the military showed.

The morning light revealed a gaping crater in the ground several metres wide next to the damaged building and a children’s playground, a Reuters photographer said.

Three people were killed including a couple who lived on the eighth floor of the building and a man who had been outside at the time of the attack, authorities said. At least 27 other persons, including three children, were hurt, the emergency services said.

The first drone strike came around midnight and was followed by three more. Air raid sirens blared repeatedly through the night.

Russia also fired drones and ballistic and cruise missiles at the Poltava region, inflicting “some damage of infrastructure and equipment” at the Myrhorod military airfield, the regional governor said.

Ten drones attacked two areas of the Kharkiv region, which borders Russia and also backs onto the front line, wounding a 39-year-old man and killing one other person, governor Oleh Synehubov.

Ukraine also shot down two drones over the Dnipropetrovsk region where no damage was reported, its governor Serhiy Lysak said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday he planned to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone soon to urge him to withdraw Russia’s troops from Ukraine.

Addressing a convention of the German Protestant church in Nuremberg, Scholz said he had spoken to Putin by telephone in the past. “I plan to do it again soon,” he said.

“It’s not reasonable to force Ukraine to approve and accept the raid that Putin has perpetrated and that parts of Ukraine become Russian just like that,” Scholz added, saying he would work to ensure that NATO does not get drawn into the war. Reuters

Last reactor at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant shut down

• Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency said it has put the last operating reactor at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant into a “cold shutdown”, as per official reports
• Five out of six reactors at the plant, which is under Russian occupation, are already in a state of shutdown with the last reactor being shut by the agency on Thursday