What happened in Russia’s Sunday and Monday strikes across Ukraine, including the Kharkiv apartment block bombing, where were people killed or injured, what civilian buildings and communications networks were damaged, and how did Zelenskyy’s response, the Russia–Germany exchange

Russian strikes on Sunday, September 27, and early Monday, September 28, hit civilian areas across Ukraine. A guided bomb struck an apartment building in Kharkiv, injuring 22 people, including children; reports of deaths and injuries elsewhere were still developing. 36

What was hit

• People and civilian sites: On Sunday, drones set a market outside Kyiv ablaze, killing two people; Reuters reported three more deaths in strikes elsewhere that day. Kyiv also came under attack. 3 The Monday Kharkiv apartment-block strike injured 22, according to the city’s mayor. 6
• Communications: A Sunday strike hit the Kyiv headquarters of Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile provider, amid attacks on Ukrainian data centres and communications infrastructure. The available evidence does not establish the extent of any resulting network outage. 1

How the developments were framed

• Zelenskyy and diplomacy: Zelenskyy accused Russia of terrorising Ukrainians and said the attacks showed no de-escalation. Moscow, meanwhile, rejected German calls at the U.N. to ease its escalation toward NATO, underscoring the gap between diplomatic appeals and events on the ground. 14
• The battlefield: Ukraine’s Third Army Corps said it had recaptured another 51 square kilometres in northern Donetsk, seeking to complicate Russia’s push toward Ukraine’s eastern strongholds. That is a Ukrainian military claim, not an independently established measure of a wider reversal; Russia remains focused on taking the rest of Donetsk. 72