Overnight Russian drone attacks on east, south and central Ukraine damaged civilian infrastructure and businesses in the Poltava region and injured civilians in the Odesa region, Ukrainian officials said early on Wednesday. Odesa came under a "massive attack" by Russian drones overnight on Tuesday, wounding at least three people, the head of the regional administration, Oleh Kiper, wrote on his Telegram page. A residential building in a densely populated urban area of Odesa, civilian infrastructure and an educational facility were hit, he said. Air defence units repelled Russian air attacks on the Kyiv region and Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv, regional governors said in posts on Telegram channels. Russian forces said they have retaken St Nicholas Belogorsky monastery in the village of Gornal in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops had been based, Russia's TASS news agency quoted a security source as saying.

At least 51 people were killed and 271 injured when two Russian ballistic missiles hit a military academy and a nearby hospital in Ukraine's central town of Poltava in the deadliest single attack in the war this year. The missiles hit shortly after the air raid alert sounded when many people were on their way to a bomb shelter, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement. A woman and her eight-year-old son were killed after the Zaporizhia region hotel where they were staying was hit in a Russian missile attack. Her husband and daughter were injured, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine's Ministry of Energy said three employees were injured in a Russian drone attack on a power facility in the northern region of Chernihiv.

Ukraine and Russia launched waves of drone attacks overnight with reports of a fire at an oil refinery in Ukraine's Poltava region and four Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) being shot down over two regions in Russia's west, officials say. A Russian drone hit the Kremenchuk oil refinery in the central Poltava region of Ukraine, causing a fire, the regional governor, Dmytro Lunin, said on Wednesday. "Last night, Russians repeatedly attacked Poltava region. Our air defence system did a good job against enemy UAVs," he said on the Telegram messaging app. The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said air defence systems shot down 17 of 24 drones that Russia launched against targets in Ukraine.

Russia has launched air attacks on targets in southern and eastern Ukraine using drones and possibly ballistic missiles, Ukraine's air force said. The southern port of Odesa and the Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions were all under threat of Russian drone attacks, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Russia may also be using ballistic weaponry to attack the regions of Poltava, Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kirovohrad, the air force added. Oleh Kiper, the head of the Odesa region's military administration, said air defence systems there were engaged in repelling a Russian drone attack. "Several waves of attacks are likely," Kiper said on Telegram.