- WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A spate of Russian missile strikes have killed seven people, including two children, and wounded another 36 after they slammed into a town in southern Ukraine as the conflict continues to intensify.
Tyrant Putin's forces fired a number of missiles at the town of Vilniansk, outside the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, on Saturday with officials in Ukraine releasing photos of bodies stretched out under picnic blankets in a park in the city.
Other grim images showed deep craters in the blackened earth next to the charred remains of a building.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his appeal to allies, urging them to provide his battered country with more long-range weapons and enhanced air defences to stop what he claimed were daily attacks.
Vilniansk lies less than 20 miles from the local capital and north of the front lines with Russian forces continuing to occupy part of the province.
Local governor Ivan Fedorov confirmed that three children were among the dead and nine more were wounded. Following the devastating attack authorities declared a day of mourning on Sunday.
In a separate Telegram post hours earlier, Mr Fedorov said the strike damaged a shop, residential buildings, and an unspecified 'critical infrastructure' facility in the city, which had a population of around 14,300 prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia continues to stretch out Ukrainian forces in several areas along the 600-mile front. Moscow has stepped up airstrikes in a bid to drain Ukraine's resources, often targeting energy facilities and other vital infrastructure.
In the aftermath of the Vilniansk attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Kyiv's Western partners to bolster its air defences and long-range munitions to deter Russian attacks.
Meanwhile in Ukraine's war-torn eastern Donetsk region, eight civilians died and 14 more suffered wounds on Saturday and overnight, according to local governor Vadym Filashkin, as near-daily shelling continues in much of the province.
Attacks also killed one civilian and wounded five more in the southern Kherson region, its governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on Telegram.
And according to Kharkiv local governor Oleh Syniehubov, four people were wounded in the northeast province, which has been the site of fierce battles in recent months as Russia launched a cross-border push that threatened Ukraine's second-largest city.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday claimed its forces overnight shot down three dozen Ukrainian drones over six regions in Russia's southwest.
Debris from one drone fell on a village in the Kursk region, blowing out windows and damaging roofs and fences, according to a Telegram post by regional governor Aleksey Smirnov.
In the city of Lipetsk, further north, a drone was shot down as it appeared to target the industrial zone. There were no casualties in either case.
The latest attacks come after Russia blamed the United States for the deaths of three people including two children when a Ukrainian missile was shot down over a crowded beach in Russian-occupied Crimea earlier this month.
The victims were among nearly 120 tourists who were hit by fragments of the weapon after it was blasted out of the sky above Sevastopol.
Two children, aged three and ten, were among those killed, as was an elderly woman who was swimming in the sea at the time of the impact.
Russian officials claimed they shot down five missiles in total as they flew over the Crimean capital, with the fifth munition breaking up into deadly debris over the beach in Uchkuevka.
In the aftermath of the attack the Kremlin claimed the weapons which were destroyed were American-made and that Washington bears responsibility for those killed.
'The responsibility for a deliberate missile strike on peaceful residents of Sevastopol is carried primarily by Washington, which supplied this weaponry to Ukraine,' the Russian defence ministry wrote on Telegram, saying Ukraine used ATACMS missiles.
Video shared on social media shows terror-stricken Russian tourists fleeing the beach in Sevastopol in the occupied Black Sea peninsula at the moment of the strike.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, Governor of Sevastopol, said the number of wounded was almost 100, describing the incident as grave.
Earlier in the day one person had been killed and three were injured in Russia's Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, when three Ukrainian drones attacked the city of Grayvoron, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Russia's ministry of defence said air defence forces shot down 33 Ukrainian drones over the country's western Bryansk, Smolensk, Lipetsk and Tula regions.
A fresh attack on Kharkiv killed at least one person and injured 10, according to local officials. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city was attacked by a guided bomb and around half of Kharkiv was without electricity because of the strike.
Earlier, Russian strikes had hit a house and a children's educational facility in Kharkiv, killing one person and injuring 10 including two teenagers, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said.
