Russian guided bombs struck a residential neighbourhood in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv early on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding nine others, including a child, according to local authorities. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said a body was recovered from the rubble of a low-rise building in the Kholodnohirsky district, and emergency crews continued searching for survivors. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov reported five of the injured had been hospitalised, while warning the toll could rise. A separate drone strike on a civilian car in Kharkiv the previous evening killed a man and wounded the driver.

The attack came as the Kremlin, responding to what it described as Ukraine’s largest-ever drone assault on Moscow two days earlier, signalled it would intensify its military campaign. Russian defence officials said air defences had intercepted 187 Ukrainian drones overnight Saturday, including two approaching the capital, while the governor of Tyumen in western Siberia reported a repelled attack on an oil refinery. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Russia’s strikes on Ukraine would “continue”, and state media quoted him describing Moscow’s air defences as “performing well”. Moscow’s defence ministry also said it had shot down 177 Ukrainian drones in an earlier wave.

Viewed from Kyiv, the Kharkiv strike is the latest in a series of Russian attacks that Ukraine’s air force said involved 99 drones overnight, of which 92 were shot down or neutralized. Ukrainian officials have consistently framed their own strikes on Russian energy facilities as legitimate retaliation for Moscow’s bombardment of civilian infrastructure. “These strikes will continue,” Peskov said, according to Russian news agencies, underscoring the cycle of reprisal that has seen both sides step up long-range attacks despite the diplomatic freeze. In the southern Kherson region, a 72-year-old woman was wounded in a drone attack, local officials said, while in Pavlohrad, an eight-year-old girl was killed in a separate strike claimed by Russia.

US-led negotiations to end the conflict, now in its fourth year, remain effectively deadlocked, with no meaningful dialogue between Moscow and Washington. European capitals have expressed alarm at the escalation, but Western military aid to Ukraine continues. Britain, according to a report in The Telegraph, has tested a new long-range weapons system with a range of over 300 miles that could be supplied to Ukrainian forces. As both sides trade blows deep inside each other’s territory, the immediate consequence is a mounting civilian toll and the further erosion of prospects for a negotiated settlement.