The China Mail - Fresh Russian strikes on Ukraine's infrastructure kill seven

The attacks came as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky was due to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York, where he was expected to appeal again for better air defences against the barrage of Russian drones and missiles.

"Russians launched many drones against the city," Zelensky said on social media. "As of now, two people have been reported killed."

Officials in Kyiv said 41 people had been wounded.

Clouds of smoke covered parts of the city, with the smell of burning heavy in the atmosphere, AFP journalists said, as commuters headed to work to the sound of air-defence explosions.

Artem Derevyaha had come to work in a canteen in the city centre when a first strike hit the building he was in.

"Everyone went out, and we had literally just moved two metres away when the second strike happened," he said.

"You just have time to lie down on the floor, that's all. You don't have any thoughts in your head. Absolutely nothing."

Ukrainian officials said Russian drones had targeted gas stations, offices and businesses, as well as railway infrastructure.

- Cripple and destroy -

Kyiv's rail network was "under fire", said Ukrainian Railways chief Oleksandr Pertsovsky, who urged "maximum" vigilance from passengers using the city's central station.

Ukraine's state-run railways, which have kept operating, have been a lifeline since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

But Pertsovsky told AFP earlier this month that strikes were worsening every week, after one attack hit a train used by foreign diplomats near the Polish border.

Zelensky has accused Russia of trying to "cripple the economy and destroy people's lives".

At least four people were killed, including a young child, in an attack on a residential building in Oleksandrivka, west of Kramatorsk, in the eastern Donbas region that has been the epicentre of the fighting.

Human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said four others had been wounded but up to eight more, including two infants, might still be under the rubble.

"Russia does not stop delivering systematic strikes on civilian targets both day and night," he added.

- Turkey's protests -

In Ukraine's southern Black Sea port of Odesa, the captain of a cargo ship was killed in a Russian attack -- part of a wave of strikes from both sides on commercial vessels designed to hit export revenues.

The head of the Odesa region, Oleg Kiper, said the Ukrainian captain was in charge of the vessel, which was sailing on the Black Sea under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda.

At least 226 civilian and commercial vessels have been hit on the Black Sea since the start of the conflict, Turkey's IMEAK chamber of shipping said.

Seventy percent -- or 163 attacks -- took place in the first eight months of this year.

Turkey, whose vessels are increasingly in the firing line, has sent a proposal to Russia and Ukraine to end strikes on civilian ships but the two foes have failed to act on it.

"The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea are unacceptable, regardless of who is responsible," Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

Russia's defence ministry said its latest attacks on the Kyiv region had hit a warehouse and business linked to the production of drones for the Ukrainian armed forces. It said similar sites had been hit in the Odesa area, as well as a vessel delivering military cargo.

L.Johnson--ThChM