The latest attacks on civilians come days before talks in which Zelenskyy hopes to secure the long-range missiles from Trump.
Russian forces have struck a hospital and a United Nations convoy in Ukraine, officials say, in attacks likely to bolster President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s pitch for long-range Tomahawk missiles when he meets his United States counterpart later this week.
Officials said on Tuesday that overnight attacks involving drones and glide bombs struck a hospital in Kharkiv, injuring 57 people and forcing the evacuation of 50 patients.
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Meanwhile, Russian forces attacked a UN convoy that was delivering aid to the front-line town of Bilozerka in the partially occupied southern region of Kherson, UN and Ukrainian officials said. No casualties were reported.
The attacks in Kharkiv and Kherson – condemned, respectively, by Zelenskyy as a “terrorist” attack and by the UN as a violation of international law – come days before a scheduled meeting between Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Friday when the pair is expected to discuss the potential supply of long-range, precision-strike Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv to allow it to hit back at Moscow.
Trump has suggested in recent days that he was considering providing Kyiv with Tomahawks, which would be the longest-range missiles in Ukraine’s arsenal and could allow it to accurately strike targets deep inside Russia, including Moscow.
Washington had previously ruled out supplying Ukraine with the cruise missiles, which the Kremlin has warned could have serious consequences and would entail direct US involvement in the conflict.
Hospital attacked
The overnight attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, hit the city’s main hospital, Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
He described the strikes as an “utterly terrorist, cynical attack on a place where lives are saved”.
A Russian attack caused injuries, evacuations and damage at a hospital in Kharkiv, Ukraine [Handout/Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP]
He said the main targets of the overnight raids across the country had once again been energy facilities and power facilities in the Kherson and Sumy regions were hit.
“Every day, every night, Russia strikes power plants, power lines, and our [natural] gas facilities,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
For the past three years, Russia has started to target Ukraine’s power grid before each winter in a campaign to demoralise the population by leaving millions without power in freezing conditions.
In response to the escalating attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities, which forced outages across the country on Monday in a bid to reduce pressure on the grid, Zelenskyy has called on Ukraine’s allies to help blunt Russia’s long-range attacks by providing more air defence systems.
Ukraine has dispatched a senior delegation to Washington to discuss boosting its defence and energy resilience, officials said on Monday.
Attack on aid convoy
Meanwhile, in Kherson, the UN said its convoy of four vehicles, clearly marked with World Food Programme branding, came under attack from Russian drones and artillery while delivering aid.
Two trucks were damaged in the strike although no one was injured, said the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Matthias Schmale.
“Such attacks are utterly unacceptable. Aid workers are protected by international humanitarian law and should never be attacked,” he said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the strike “another brutal violation of international law, proving Russia’s utter disregard for civilian lives and its international obligations”.
The UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, told the AFP news agency that the convoy was carrying 800 individual packages “containing essential items for older persons, women and girls”.
Aid groups have reported throughout the nearly four-year invasion that their staff and facilities have come under attack from Russian forces.
