Russia torments Kyiv with seventh day of strikes

Russian drones have torn into central Kyiv wounding 11 people and damaging residential and university buildings on the seventh day of nearly round-the-clock attacks that have upended daily life in Ukraine's capital.

Moscow's new air campaign against Kyiv and the surrounding region has killed dozens of civilians and disrupted logistics as the city struggles to shoot down the jet-powered drones that have swarmed the area in waves.

Wednesday's attack on a downtown university took place while students were in class, forcing some 160 to seek shelter, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

"Unfortunately, there has been far too little response from the world and its most influential leaders to this latest Russian escalation of strikes," Zelenskiy wrote on X.

The mounting attacks come with Ukraine already bracing for a new season of Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, amid a critical shortage of US-designed missile interceptors needed to down Moscow's ballistic missiles.

Earlier on Wednesday, Russia struck power facilities in the southern Odesa region with missiles and drones, authorities said, knocking out power to more than 350,000 homes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said late on Tuesday he had ordered his forces to prepare a new campaign of "massive" strikes.

Two people were also killed and eight wounded in strikes on the southeastern city of Dnipro, the regional governor said, where food warehouses and educational buildings were damaged.

Loud explosions thundered through central Kyiv on Wednesday morning as air defences targeted incoming drones. The hiss of their jet engines could be heard streaking across the sky.

While launched in small numbers, they have sparked frequent air raid alerts that have snarled public transport in the city of several million and forced people underground.

Parts of Kyiv's Soviet-era metro system have been suspended during alerts, leaving residents mired in heavy traffic.

Many of those interviewed by Reuters expressed fatigue mixed with resignation.

"What scares me is that I'm fatalistic about them (the alerts) - that there's no sense of threat, or a desire to hide somewhere," said 26-year-old resident Yulia, a marketing specialist, adding she felt only "total powerlessness".

Alerts interrupted parliament twice on Wednesday, prompting MPs to test a new digital voting system from underneath the legislature, according to opposition deputy Yaroslav Zhelezniak, who posted footage of the platform.