Kyiv, June 8: Russia unleashed its largest drone attack yet on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, overnight, killing at least three people and wounding over 40, officials said on Friday, in a strike Ukraine condemned as “pure terrorism.”
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 48 drones, two missiles and four gliding bombs rained down on the city, damaging 18 apartment blocks, 13 private homes and a civilian industrial facility. Among the wounded were a baby and a 14-year-old girl, he added.
“The scale of destruction is enormous… This is open terror,” Terekhov said. Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, said the industrial site alone was hit by 40 drones, one missile and four bombs, with authorities fearing more victims could be trapped under debris.
The strikes came a day after Russia launched more than 400 drones and nearly 40 missiles across Ukraine, killing six people and injuring 80. The Kremlin said the barrages were retaliation for Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian air bases earlier in the week.
Two more civilians were reported killed in Russian strikes on Kherson, in southern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the Kharkiv assault as having “no military sense,” calling it a “terrorist act” aimed at demoralizing civilians. “Putin is buying time to prolong the war… the pressure must not stop,” he said.
The escalation follows Ukraine’s audacious drone raid last Sunday, dubbed “Operation Spider’s Web,” which Kyiv claims disabled or destroyed at least 40 Russian warplanes at four airbases deep inside Russia.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said 117 drones were smuggled into Russia inside trucks with concealed launching systems and launched remotely from near the bases.
Amid the intensifying violence, a prisoner exchange deal agreed during talks in Istanbul this week has hit a snag. Moscow accused Kyiv of abruptly postponing the swap and not showing up at designated exchange points. Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said the bodies of over 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been taken to an agreed site, along with a list of 640 Ukrainian POWs.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for Prisoners of War denied the allegations, accusing Moscow of submitting “non-compliant” lists and acting unilaterally. It said no final date for the exchange had been confirmed.
Meanwhile, former U.S. President Donald Trump said Kyiv’s drone strike on Russian airfields gave President Vladimir Putin “a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night.” Trump claimed Putin told him in a recent phone call that Russia “had to respond.”
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently occupies about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. Peace talks remain deadlocked, with Kyiv demanding an unconditional ceasefire and Moscow rejecting the proposal.
