At least three people were killed and 25 others injured after a Russian air attack on a residential neighbourhood in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih in Ukraine’s south, regional authorities said early on Tuesday.

Serhiy Lysak, the military governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Telegram that 19 people had been hospitalised.

He said a “massive missile attack” hit Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown.

Air defences repelled three cruise missiles, but others hit civilian sites.

The head of the local military administration Oleksandr Vilkul also reported a strike on a five-story building and wrote that there were probably still people under the rubble.

Air raid sirens sounded in many other Ukrainian regions. According to local authorities, Russian forces also fired cruise missiles on Kyiv’s capital.

Ukrainian officials said the city’s air defences intercepted all incoming missiles.

There were also reports of drone attacks on the eastern city of Kharkiv.

According to British intelligence, Russia now receives larger consignments of Iranian “kamikaze” drones. It said the drones are likely being delivered by ship, not a plane, across the Caspian Sea.

“By supplying these weapons, Iran continues to breach UN Security Council Resolution 2231,” the ministry’s latest update said.

The ministry said that Moscow is also pressing ahead on the domestic production of drones, “almost certainly” with Iranian assistance.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, give Russia a “relatively cheap long-range strike capability at a time when it has expended a large proportion of its cruise missile stocks in Ukraine.”

The Caspian Sea has become Russia’s more critical transport route since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion.

“It allows Russia to access Asian markets – including arms transfers – in ways it hopes are less vulnerable to international sanctions,” the update said.

The British Ministry of Defence has been publishing daily bulletins on the course of the war since the invasion began in February 2022 to keep allies up to date and counter disinformation.

Moscow accuses London of a disinformation campaign.

(dpa/NAN)