Ukraine war: Russian claims missile strike on armoured-vehicle repair plant in Kharkiv

Building of a ‘civilian enterprise’ in the city is hit by four missiles, regional governor says

An employee at work at the ArcelorMittal steel plant, in Kryvyi Rig, southern Ukraine. Photograph: ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images
An employee at work at the ArcelorMittal steel plant, in Kryvyi Rig, southern Ukraine. Photograph: ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images

Russia has carried out a missile strike on a plant in the northeast Ukrainian city of Kharkiv where armoured vehicles for Ukraine’s military are repaired, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday.

The ministry did not say when the strike had taken place or provide any other details.

Regional governor Oleh Synehubov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said on Sunday that Russia had hit the building of a “civilian enterprise” in Kharkiv with four S300 missiles. The Kharkiv regional administration did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, had a population of more than 1.4 million before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Parts of the city lie less than 32km (20 miles) from the Russian border.

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Earlier on Sunday, Russia launched a combined drone and missile attack on Ukraine, targeting chiefly the southern parts of the Odesa region and hitting an agriculture facility there, Ukraine’s Air Forces said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia launched six Iranian-made Shahed drones and 10 cruise missiles, with Ukraine's forces destroying six drones and six missiles before they hit their target, the Air Force said.

Odesa governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram that a grain silo and agricultural fields were damaged in Berezivskiy district in the eastern part of the region.

Reuters could not independently verify the report and there was no immediate comment from Russia. The entire territory of Ukraine was under air raid alerts for several hours.

The situation in Odesa and its ports has been watched carefully by grain markets, as Kyiv said on Saturday that two cargo vessels arrived there to use a temporary corridor to sail into Black Sea ports and load grain for African and Asian markets.

Ukraine last month announced a “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea to release ships trapped in its ports since the start of the war in February 2022 and to circumvent a de facto blockade after Russia abandoned a deal to let Kyiv export grain.

Elsewhere, a Ukrainian drone damaged an oil depot in southwestern Russia early on Sunday, sparking a fire at a fuel tank that was later extinguished, the regional governor said.

A Ukraine-launched drone was shot down in the Ramensky district of the Moscow region early on Sunday, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said – Reuters