KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian drone strikes on Ukraine overnight killed five people and injured 30 more, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.
The attacks came as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Istanbul for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He will also meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Russia fired 286 drones at Ukraine overnight, 260 of which were downed, the Ukrainian Air Force said in an online statement.
Five people – three women and two men – were killed in the city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and 19 others, including a 14-year-old girl, were wounded, head of the regional military administration Oleksandr Hanzha said. The attack damaged market stalls and a shop.
In the city of Sumy, not far from the border with Russia, a strike injured 11 people, including a 15-year-old, the National Police said. Residential areas were hit, and houses, cars and utility networks were damaged in the attack.
In the capital, Kyiv, a drone strike caused a fire on the first floor of a three-story office and warehouse building, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. No casualties were reported.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Saturday that its forces fired “long-range air- and ground-based precision weapons, as well as strike drones” at unspecified “military-industrial and energy facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
In a separate statement, the ministry said that the Russian military overnight shot down 85 Ukrainian drones over nine Russian regions, the annexed Crimea region and the Black Sea.
In Russia’s Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, one person was killed and four sustained injuries, according to the region’s governor, Yuri Slyusar. The attack sparked a fire at a warehouse facility of an unspecified logistics company, and another fire on a dry-cargo vessel flying a foreign flag several kilometers from the shore, Slyusar said.
In the Samara region’s city of Tolyatti, one person was wounded, Gov. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. The roof of a residential building was damaged, and windows were shattered in several apartments, he said.
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