A Russian drone attack on a residential block killed nine people including three elderly couples in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, officials said on Thursday. Moscow has pummelled Ukrainian cities with dozens of drones or missiles almost daily since it invaded in early 2022.

The drone blew out a wall and surrounding windows in the building in Sumy, a major city, just after 1 a.m., the Sumy regional administration said.

Ukrainian drones hit an oil refinery 250 miles east of Moscow in a huge wave of attacks on Russian power plants, say military sources. A large fire exploded at the refinery in Kstovo city in the Nizhny Novgorod region following the attack, the Ukrainian military said, adding it was assessing the scale of damage there.