KYIV: Russian bombardments on eastern Ukraine killed two people overnight, local authorities said Thursday, while Moscow launched dozens of drones that wounded 14 and sparked fires hundreds of kilometres from the front.
Both Russia and Ukraine have stepped up aerial attacks even as US President Donald Trump pushes the Kremlin and Kyiv to agree to a ceasefire after more than three years of costly fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the latest Russian attacks were evidence that Russia is not genuinely seeking an end to the war.
“With each such launch, the Russians expose to the world their true attitude towards peace,“ he wrote on social media.
Ukrainian officials in the northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions said that two people were killed and several others wounded after Russia dropped more than three dozen glide bombs on the towns in the border regions.
The Russian drone attack on the town of Kropyvnytsky, hundreds of kilometres from the front line, wounded 14 people, including four children, and sent plumes of fire and smoke rising over the skyline, according to officials.
“Kropyvnytsky underwent the most massive enemy attack. Peaceful residential buildings were destroyed,“ regional governor Andriy Raikovych said.
The Ukrainian railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia said its services had been disrupted in the region as a result of shelling.
“This is what a ceasefire from Putin looks like. Russia attacks civilians with great pleasure,“ presidential aide Andriy Yermak wrote on social media.
The Ukrainian air force said that the Russian barrage, including on Kropyvnytsky, consisted of 171 drones and that its air defence shot down 75 drones. Another 63 were downed by electronic jamming systems or were lost.
Russia meanwhile said its air defence units had shot down 132 Ukrainian drones in several regions across the country.
The southwestern region of Saratov and its city of Engels “were today subjected to the most massive UAV (drone) attack ever” said its governor Roman Busargin, who added the attack triggered a fire at the Engels airbase.
The attack wounded two people in Engels and damaged schools and a hospital, Russia’s investigative committee said.
