Russia maintains punishing pace of deadly strikes on Ukrainian cities

KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian missile attack on a small town in southeastern Ukraine and the fiery inferno that followed killed at least seven civilians, including three children, the country’s authorities said as they surveyed on Sunday the deadly toll of two days of fierce Russian assaults.

Yuriy Borzenko, chief doctor of Zaporizhzhia Regional Children’s Hospital, said in a phone interview that, aside from those killed, dozens of others, including a pregnant woman and five 14-year-old girls, were being treated for wounds after the attack on the southeastern town, Vilniansk, which took place Saturday.

The girls were out for a walk together, Borzenko said, when explosions from the projectiles tore through the center of town, engulfing shops, cars and homes in flames. Shrapnel had embedded in the skull of one of the girls, who was left in a coma, he said.

As the attacks have rained down, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has reiterated his plea to loosen restrictions on the use of long-range U.S. missiles known as ATACMS so that Ukraine can target warplanes at Russian air bases before they take to the sky on bombing runs.

“Long-range strikes and modern air defense are the foundation for stopping the daily Russian terror,” he said Sunday in a statement accompanying videos said to show the aftermath of a number of the week’s worst attacks.

The strike in Vilniansk was one of a series of attacks across Ukraine, which have killed at least 24 civilians since Friday evening, according to local officials and emergency workers, who said that scores more had been wounded.

All of the attacks — reported by local officials reached by phone, the National Police, emergency services and local hospitals, with the aftermath of many captured on video by Ukrainian news outlets — took place within 48 hours and formed only a partial snapshot of the daily violence.

The total number of civilians killed in June is not yet available but May was the deadliest month for civilians in Ukraine in a year, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission.

Investigators with the mission reported that at least 174 civilians were killed and 690 others injured in conflict-related violence that month.

The rising death toll has coincided with the continuing bombardment of Ukraine’s power grid, which is making life challenging for millions of residents who have already been enduring hours of scheduled blackouts every day.