A Russian missile struck a densely populated residential area in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy late on Sunday, Nov. 17, killing 11 people, including a 9-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service later reported that a total of 89 people were injured, including 11 children.
“Damaged houses, vehicles, broken glass everywhere... Sunday evening for the city of Sumy became hell, a tragedy brought to our land by Russia,” commented Volodymyr Artyukh, the head of Sumy’s military administration.
Around 400 residents were evacuated from a nine-story building struck by the missile.
Ukraine's Air Force reported that Russia had attacked the Sumy Region with “two Iskander-M ballistic missiles launched from the Voronezh Region. and a guided Kh-59 missile from the airspace of the Kursk Region.”
Throughout the night, 10 separate attacks were reported across the Sumy Region by Russian forces, with at least 26 explosions recorded. The impacted areas included the communities of Sumy, Yunakivka, Myropillia, and Velykopysarivka.
Monday also saw a separate attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa, with a Russian ballistic missile striking a parking lot in a residential area and damaging an apartment building, a university, and an administrative building, President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
Eight people were killed in the attack, and 39 others were injured, including four children aged 7, 10, and 11 years old, as per reports from Odesa mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov and military administration head Oleh Kiper.
The strikes on Sumy and Odesa came after a day in which Russia targeted Ukraine’s power grid in what Kyiv described as a “massive” attack involving 120 missiles and 90 drones, resulting in at least seven deaths. The attack also followed news reports that the Biden administration had authorized Ukraine to use long-range U.S.-supplied weapons to strike military targets within Russia.
Locals in Odesa had been without power for 24 hours as of Monday morning, with additional outages planned nationwide after a massive Russian missile strike over the weekend severely damaged energy infrastructure.
“The situation is most difficult in Odesa and Odesa District. Unfortunately, it is not yet technically possible to supply power to the critical infrastructure in the Kyivskyi and Primorskyi districts of the city,” power distributor DTEK wrote on Telegram.
400,000 homes had power restored as of Monday morning, while 321,000 consumers remained without service, DTEK added.