RUSSIA HAS SHELLED more than 100 settlements over the last 24 hours – more than in any single day so far this year, Ukraine said today.

Moscow has fired millions of shells on cities, towns and villages since it invaded in February 2022, reducing several to rubble across the eastern part of the country.

“Over the last 24 hours, the enemy shelled 118 settlements in 10 regions,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said on social media.

“This is the highest number of cities and villages that have come under attack since the start of the year,” he added.

Kyiv also reported a Russian attack on an oil refinery in Kremenchuk, a central industrial city.

There were no casualties but it took almost 100 firefighters several hours to put out the resulting blaze, Klymenko said.

Kyiv and the West fear Russia will escalate its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of the cold winter – as it did last year.

The overnight shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv region killed one person, and another was killed in the southern Kherson region, local officials said.

During the day, Ukraine said a Russian drone attack on the southern city of Nikopol killed a 59-year-old woman and injured four others. A rocket strike on a village in the Zaporizhzhia region killed a 52-year-old man.

Both Kyiv and Moscow said they had also shot down enemy drones overnight.

Since the start of the war, Russia has dramatically ramped up its domestic arms production while also tapping its few foreign partners for ammunition supplies.

Citing intelligence information, a South Korean lawmaker said today that North Korea has provided Russia with over one million artillery rounds.

Western countries have meanwhile provided billions of dollars of military aid to Kyiv to help defend against Russian attacks.

© AFP 2023