At least five injured after Ukraine and Russia exchange drone strikes

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Ukraine said it downed 35 of 39 Russian drones overnight, whilst Russia said it shot down 26 Ukrainian drones over its southern Rostov region on Saturday.

At least five people were injured in Ukraine on Sunday by Russian strikes, local officials said, as the two countries exchanged drone, missile, and shelling attacks.

Along the front line in the east, Russia said it had taken control of two villages, one in the Kharkiv region and one in the Luhansk region.

Kyiv has not commented yet, but local officials said on Sunday morning three people were wounded by Russian drone strikes in southern Ukraine’s partly occupied Kherson region.

In the country’s northeast, officials in the Kharkiv region said two people were wounded when a village was hit by Russian shells.

Ukraine’s air force reportedly shot down 35 of 39 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia launched overnight.

The air force also said Russia launched three Iskander-M ballistic missiles and two cruise missiles.

They claimed that the cruise missiles didn’t reach their targets due to Ukraine’s “countermeasures,” but didn’t mention what the Iskander-M missiles hit or whether any damage was caused.

No casualties have been reported.

Russian forces regularly attack civilian areas across Ukraine, but their attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid have intensified in recent months.

That’s resulted in often severe damage to multiple energy facilities and forced Ukraine to impose lengthy rolling blackouts.

Ukrainian authorities said that the Russian forces launched their attacks on three locations, including Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Primorsko-Akhtarsk – a town in Krasnodar Krai on the Azov Sea coast, and occupied Crimea.

Two people killed by Russian strike

Elsewhere in Ukraine, at least two people were killed and three more injured after a Russian missile strike on infrastructure in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Saturday.

Ukrainian officials also confirmed that the death toll following a Russian strike on Friday on the city of Mykolaiv near the Black Sea had risen to four. A child was among the victims, said the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Writing about the Mykolaiv strike on social media, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a projectile had hit a playground next to an apartment block.

“Russia proves every day with its terror that ‘pressure’ is not enough,” he said. “This destruction of life must be stopped. We need new solutions to support our defences. Russia must feel the power of the world.”

Russia’s attacks have left thousands of people without power or running water in the Poltava region of central Ukraine, Governor Filip Pronin said.

A pulverising Russian onslaught in recent months has forced Kyiv’s troops to withdraw from some towns and villages in the eastern Donetsk region.

Russia’s Defence Ministry also claimed on Saturday that it had shot down 26 Ukrainian drones over Russia’s southern Rostov region, several hundred kilometres from the front line.

Three more drones were destroyed over the Belgorod region, as well as one over the Smolensk region, it said. No casualties were reported.