One dead, clinic hit as Ukraine downs Russian missiles

At least one person has been killed and 15 wounded in a Russian missile strike on a clinic in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says.

In an online post on Friday under video footage of a badly damaged building with smoke pouring out of it, he said rescue efforts were under way.

“Russian terrorists once again confirm their status of fighters against everything humane and honest,” Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“A rocket attack on a clinic in the city of Dnipro. 

“As of now, one person was killed and 15 were wounded. 

“The shelling aftermath is being eliminated and the victims are being rescued.”

Ukrainian officials said earlier on Friday air defences had shot down 10 missiles and more than 20 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks on the capital Kyiv, Dnipro and eastern regions.

Reuters was unable to verify the reports.

Zelenskiy’s office said in a statement on Friday a fire had broken out on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Kharkiv after an oil depot was hit twice, and equipment for pumping oil products had been damaged.

Russia has intensified missile and drone attacks on Ukraine this month, mainly attacking logistics and infrastructure facilities before an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 10 missiles fired from the Caspian Sea, 23 Iranian-made Shahed drones and two reconnaissance drones during the overnight attacks.

It said a total of 17 missiles and 31 drones had been launched in the attacks, which started on Thursday night and continued until Friday morning.

Several drones and several missiles hit targets in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials said.

Officials in Kyiv said the roof of a shopping mall, a private house and several cars had been damaged.

The governor of the Kharkiv region also reported damage to several private houses and industrial facilities.

The attacks came as Russian officials and media reported Ukraine struck two regions in southern Russia with a rocket and a drone, although the missile was shot down by air defences. 

In the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, a blast damaged a residential and office building, officials said.

They did not say what caused the blast, although Russian media said it was a drone attack. 

Unverified videos on social media showed a drone flying over the city.

“All emergency services are working at the scene,” Krasnodar mayor Yevgeny Naumov wrote on Telegram.

“The cause of the incident is being investigated. 

“Residents are asked to stay calm.”

In the neighbouring Rostov region, the local governor said a Ukrainian missile had been shot down by air defences on Thursday near Morozovsk, where there is a Russian air base.

Also on Friday, a senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned the West was seriously underestimating the risk of a nuclear war over Ukraine, cautioning Russia would launch a pre-emptive strike if Ukraine gets nuclear weapons.

Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than any other state, has repeatedly said the West is engaged in a proxy war with Russia over Ukraine that could escalate into a much bigger conflict.

“There are irreversible laws of war,” Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

“If it comes to nuclear weapons, there will have to be a pre-emptive strike.”

Allowing Ukraine nuclear weapons – a step no Western state has publicly proposed – would mean “a missile with a nuclear charge coming to them”, Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012, was quoted as saying.