MELBOURNE: Russia’s overnight attacks killed one person in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Kharkiv and injured several more in the northern city of Chernihiv, regional Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday.
A private enterprise was hit in the small town of Balakliia in the Kharkiv region that borders Russia, killing one employee and injuring several others, Vitali Karabanov, the head of the town’s military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app.
“A massive UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) attack on the town,“ Karabanov said, without providing details of the scale.
The attacks came hours after Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Turkey for peace talks where Moscow said it would only agree to end the war if Kyiv gives up big new chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army.
Ukraine has repeatedly rejected the Russian conditions as tantamount to surrender.
Falling drones on streets and residential buildings in the northern city of Chernihiv sparked several fires, including at residential houses, Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, the head of the city’s military administration, said on Telegram.
Four people were hospitalised, Bryzhynskyi said. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said another 20 people, including eight children, received medical assistance at the site.
The service posted photos on its Telegram account showing firefighters battling blazes in the dark and medics attending to a group of children.
In the southern port city of Odesa, Russian overnight air attacks damaged residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, but there were no injuries, Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov wrote on Telegram.
The full scale of the overnight Russian attack on Ukraine was not immediately known. There was no immediate comment from Moscow and Reuters could not independently verify the Ukrainian reports.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
