Eleven people were killed and 89 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a residential building in Ukraine’s northwestern city of Sumy, Ukrainian officials reported on November 18, while a second Russian missile attack left the region’s administrative center without power. Among the eight killed in Sumy, 40 kilometers from the border with Russia, were two children, said Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko. More than 400 people were evacuated from the building.
The rescuers were checking every apartment looking for people who might be still in the damaged building. "Every life destroyed by Russia is a big tragedy," Klymenko said. The late-night attack on Sumy followed what Kyiv said was a "massive" attack on Ukraine's power grid with 120 missiles and 90 drones that killed at least seven people.
Moscow routinely denies targeting civilian infrastructure. Such strikes are widely considered a war crime. Russian strikes have hammered Ukraine's power infrastructure since Moscow's launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, prompting repeated emergency power shutdowns and nationwide rolling blackouts.
The massive Russian attack also came as U.S. President Joe Biden had reportedly authorized the use of U.
S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine to strike inside Russia, after lobbying by Ukrainian officials. The weapons are likely to be used in response to North Korea's decision to send thousands of troops to support Russia in the Kursk region where Uk.
