RUSSIAN forces unleashed a barrage of missiles on regions across Ukraine in the early hours of this morning, killing civilians and damaging civilian infrastructure.

The barrage came just hours before top Russian military officials and their counterparts from Asia, the Middle East and Africa gathered outside Moscow for a security conference, where the fighting in Ukraine is likely to dominate the agenda.

The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia fired a total of 28 cruise missiles at the country. Sixteen of them were intercepted, the statement said.

In the western region of Lviv, on the border with Poland, residential buildings and other civilian structures were damaged by missile debris, local officials said.

Ten people were wounded in two villages outside the city of Lviv.

In the nearby region of Volyn, three people were killed by a Russian missile strike and three others were injured, according to Oleksii Kuleba, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office.

In the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, two people were injured.

Parts of the city of Smila in the central Cherkasy region were left without access to water after the Russian strikes. The attack damaged a medical facility, as well as water and heat supply networks.

In one of the villages of the front-line Zaporizhzhia region, a missile struck a stadium at a school, damaging the facility’s building as well as residential houses and a nursery.

Russian forces also hit a grocery warehouse in Kramatorsk, a city in the front-line Donetsk region in the east, killing one person and wounding another.

The countrywide barrage came a day after Russian forces unleashed a wave of missile and drone strikes on the non-front-line region, Odessa, in the country’s south-west.

The Kremlin’s forces have recently pummeled Odessa, hitting facilities that transport Ukraine’s crucial grain exports and also wrecking cherished Ukrainian historical sites.

The repeated attacks on Odessa follow Moscow’s decision to break off a landmark agreement that had allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and help reduce the threat of hunger.