Ukraine’s Zelenskyy slams ‘war on civilians’ as Russian attacks leave at least 10 dead

Russian attacks overnight and on Wednesday killed at least 10 civilians in Ukraine, while senior Ukrainian military officials said their troops had made some headway in counteroffensive operations in the country's south.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, said the death toll had risen from four to five in a morning missile strike on a residential building in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Officials said a 31-year-old woman was also killed in an attack on the village of Obukhivka in the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, and a man and a woman were killed in an overnight attack on the southern region of Kherson.

On Wednesday evening, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said two bodies had been pulled from the rubble of a food shop hit by a Russian missile near the southern city of Mykolaiv.

Local officials in the Sumy region on the Russian border, said an "infrastructure site" had been hit in a drone attack, but provided no further details.

"The evil state continues to use terror and wage war on civilians. Russian terror must be defeated," Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The apartment building in Zaporizhzhia suffered serious damage from the third to fifth storeys, he said. A picture posted by Zelenskyy on Telegram showed the building with a gaping hole in the middle, its entrance destroyed and windows smashed.

In Obukhivka, near the city of Dnipro, residents said a strong explosion blew out windows and knocked people to the ground. Officials said about 20 houses were damaged.

"A woman all covered in blood ran out from one of the houses, shouting and crying. I think that her daughter died," Victor, 32, a construction worker, told Reuters television. "We entered the house and saw a dead girl."

General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, in charge of Ukraine's operations in the south, said Ukrainian forces were proceeding with their planned advance toward the Sea of Azov.

Troops from the Tavria, or southern, group of forces "have had partial success to the south of Robotyne," Tarnavskyi wrote on Telegram.

Robotyne is one of a group of villages in the south that Ukraine wants to secure as part of the advance, which is aimed at severing a land bridge linking Russian positions in the south and east.

Shelling eases near Avdiivka: military official

Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesperson for Ukraine's southern troops, told national television that shelling had eased around the town of Avdiivka, the focus of fierce Russian attacks near the Russian-held town of Donetsk in recent days. But troops in the sector were preparing for a variety of scenarios.

Ukrainian troops are also trying to recapture land in eastern regions.

The General Staff, in its evening report, said its forces had repelled attacks in several areas of the 1,000-kilometre front line — including 15 around the long-contested town of Maryinka in Donetsk region and 10 further north near Kupiansk.

Russia's Defence Ministry gave few details of its troops' operations, but said a depot of Ukrainian aviation equipment had been destroyed in central Dnipropetrovsk region.

Reuters could not verify accounts from either side.

Also Wednesday, Mikhail Razvozhayev, a Moscow-appointed regional governor, said Russia had shot down a missile over Sevastopol, home of its Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean peninsula.

Razvozhayev said the missile had detonated in a field, and that there had been no injuries or damage to infrastructure. The defence ministry later said two missiles had been shot down over Crimea, both of them converted S-200 anti-aircraft defence missiles.

Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.

Russia's Defence Ministry also reported Wednesday that Russian air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 28 Ukrainian drones overnight.

The drones were hit over Russia's Belgorod and Kursk regions and over the Black Sea, it said in a statement on Telegram.