Russian attacks on eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv kill 4

Russian attacks targetting the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed at least four people and wounded more than two dozen others on Saturday, officials said, as hopes for peace dimmed further.
The first wave on Ukraine’s second-largest city was a large Russian drone-and-missile attack in the early hours. It killed at least three people and wounded 21 others, according to local officials.
In the afternoon, Russia dropped aerial bombs on the city centre, killing at least one person and wounding five more, Kharkiv’s mayor said. The warring sides also accused each other of trying to sabotage a planned prisoner exchange, nearly a week after Kyiv embarrassed the Kremlin with a surprising drone attack on military airfields deep inside Russia. Saturday’s barrage — the latest in near daily widescale attacks on Ukraine — included aerial glide bombs that have become part of a fierce Russian onslaught in the all-out war, which began on February 24, 2022. Ukraine’s air force said that Russia struck with 215 missiles and drones overnight, and Ukrainian air defences shot down 87 drones and seven missiles.
Several other areas in Ukraine were also hit, including the regions of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, and the city of Ternopil, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in an X post.
The Russian Defence Ministry on Saturday said that its forces carried out a night time strike on Ukrainian military targets, including ammunition depots, drone assembly workshops, and weaponry repair stations. There was no comment from Moscow on the reports of casualties in Kharkiv.
Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said that the strikes also damaged 18 apartment buildings and 13 private homes. Terekhov said that it was “the most powerful attack” on the city since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Later on Saturday, Russia and Ukraine each accused the other of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action, agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that otherwise made no progress towards ending the war. Ukraine’s Security Service on Saturday released a video said to show its audacious attack on Russian air fields Sunday in which Kyiv said that 41 Russian military aircraft was destroyed. The video shows the flight path of one explosive-laden first person view, or FPV, drone — from takeoff from the roof of a modular building to the Belaya air field — where it appears to strike a Russian strategic bomber.
Other aircraft are seen engulfed in flames, apparently from previous hits in Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb.”