At least 30 civilians in Kharkiv, Ukraine, were reported injured on Sept. 15 in the wake of an exchange of missile and drone attacks between Russia and Ukraine.
A Russian-guided missile hit a residential high-rise in Kharkiv, a city in Ukraine’s northeast, on the afternoon of Sept. 15. Being so close to the Russian border, Kharkiv has been a key target of Russian strikes since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on Telegram that “the rescue operation ... continues.”
“An ordinary residential building, a multi-story building, was damaged. There is a fire and rubble between the 9th and 12th floors,” Zelenskyy said in the post, which included photos of the damaged building.
Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said there was also damage to other civilian infrastructure.
In his post on Telegram, Zelenskyy reiterated his calls for western assistance to his Eastern European nation.
“The world must help defend Ukraine from Russian military aircraft, from dozens of guided bombs that take lives of Ukrainians every day. This terror can be stopped,” Zelenskyy said.
Such attacks have become commonplace along Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia during the conflict between the two countries.
Hours before the attack on Kharkiv, on the evening of Sept. 14, a Russian missile strike also caused two deaths in the Ukrainian city of Odessa.
Russia recently sent 14 drones—10 of which were intercepted by the Ukrainian military—and three missiles—one of which was intercepted—into Ukraine.
Kyiv has often asked that it be allowed to use powerful Western munitions to bring the fight into Russia, though the West has restricted such uses out of concerns about escalation. Up to now, the United States has permitted Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied weapons solely within a restricted zone adjacent to the Russian border.
On Sept. 14, President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met to discuss support for Ukraine.
While Starmer called the meeting “long and productive” while speaking to the press afterward, he didn’t mention whether they had come to a new agreement regarding using high-powered weaponry inside Russia.
He reiterated U.S. and UK support for Ukraine over Russia.
“Ukraine has a right to self-defense, and we’ve stood united,” Starmer said.
Putin told state television that Moscow would make “appropriate decisions” to address threats against Russia if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allowed Kyiv to strike the country with Western-supplied long-range arms.
Putin suggested that Russia would perceive such a development as being tantamount to direct NATO involvement in the conflict.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, has suggested that Germany will not supply long-range precision missiles to Ukraine, regardless of what the United States and other NATO nations do, citing “a great risk of escalation.”
