Russia-Ukraine updates: Russian missiles hit close to nuclear reactors: IAEA director

Russian forces launched a series of missile strikes on Sunday that destroyed two schools in the Donetsk region of Ukraine and damaged a kindergarten in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, according to local officials.

No one was reported injured when missiles hit schools in Kostyantynivka and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, according to Donetsk region Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. Officials said that a kindergarten in Novo Dmytrivka in the Kharkiv region was also damaged.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Russian forces also launched three Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea targeting the Khmelnytskyi region of western Ukraine. All three missiles were shot down before reaching targets, the defense ministry said.

Several powerful explosions were heard in Mykolaiv near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine and in Melitopol in southeastern Ukraine Saturday night. More explosions were heard in Mykolaiv Sunday morning, officials said.

The mayor of Melitopol posted photos on Telegram showing damage to railroad tracks in his city.

Oleksandr Sienkevych, the mayor of Mykolaiv, said in a statement that officials were collecting information on the explosions and conducting a damage assessment. According to the preliminary data, Sienkevych said there were no casualties.

-ABC News Christine Theodorou

Russia’s missile strike on the Ukrainian port of Odesa Saturday cast doubt on its commitment to a U.N.-backed agreement to lift the blockade that has trapped millions of tons of grain in Ukraine and has led to a global hunger crisis.

Ukrainian officials said they still hope the deal will continue and that ships are scheduled to begin leaving next week.

Vyacheslav, a Ukrainian farmer, told ABC News Sunday that his grain harvest from last year is still being held in storage and he showed ABC News 250 tons of it sitting in a pile across from this year’s crop.

Vyacheslav said he witnessed Saturday's missile strike from his fields as he was harvesting. Part of his land contains trenches dug by Ukraine’s military in preparation for an attack.

He said the missile strike made him skeptical of Russia following through on the agreement to lift the grain embargo.

"Russia will only start to agree once we punch it in the teeth,” Vyacheslav said.

For now, he said he doesn’t know when his grain will move. Even if the deal does hold, he’s unsure that it will solve the problem for Ukraine’s farmers since price speculation, he said, is making it unprofitable for him to move it.

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

Two Americans thought to have been fighting for Ukraine have died in the eastern reach of the country, according to officials.

“We can confirm the recent deaths of two U.S. citizens in the Donbas region of Ukraine,” a State Department spokesperson said. “We are in touch with the families and providing all possible consular assistance.”

One of the Americans killed has been identified as Luke Lucyszyn, his mother confirmed to ABC News.

-ABC News Shannon Crawford, Patrick Reevell and Rashid Haddou

A Russian missile struck the Ukrainian port of Odesa on Saturday, just one day after Russia signed an agreement to allow grain ships to begin leaving the port.

The deal between Russia and Ukraine was mediated by Turkey and the United Nations. Fears of a global famine loomed as Russian ships had imposed a blockade on Ukraine exporting grain.

"It took less than 24 hours for the Russian Federation to launch a missile strike on the territory of the city of Odesa to question the agreement and promises made by it to the UN and Turkey in the document signed yesterday in Istanbul," the Ukrainian Embassy of Turkey said in a statement. "The Russian rocket is a spit of Vladimir Putin in the face of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who made a huge effort to reach the deal, and to which Ukraine is grateful."

The embassy added: "Ukraine stresses the need for persistent implementation of agreements to restore safe export of Ukrainian agricultural goods by the Black Sea from three ports: Odessa, Black Sea and South."

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell and Rashid Haddou