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Russian attacks across eastern Ukraine killed at least 11 people this weekend, while rescuers in the city of Dnipro dug through rubble after a Russian strike ripped through a nine-storey residential building, leaving one dead, officials said.
The attacks came as Russia continues to stretch out Ukrainian forces in several areas along the front.
Moscow has stepped up air strikes in a bid to drain Ukraine’s resources, often targeting energy facilities and other vital infrastructure.
The shelling of the front-line village of Niu-York in the Donetsk region also injured five people, governor Vadym Filashkin said.
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He said that Russian forces had shelled populated areas 13 times over the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the Russian ministry of emergency situations said on Sunday that four firefighters were injured in Ukraine’s shelling of the Donetsk region.
“In the Petrovsky district, department firefighters were extinguishing a fire that occurred after [Ukrainian] shelling,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. “There was an alert for a new artillery strike. The shelling hit them as they were evacuating.”
Donetsk is one of four regions in Ukraine’s east and south that Russia claimed to have annexed in late 2022 in a move condemned as illegal by most countries at the UN General Assembly. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions.
A further seven people were killed on Saturday afternoon in Russian shelling on the town of Vilniansk, including two children, governor Ivan Fedorov said. Ten more were injured, while infrastructure was also damaged, he wrote on social media.
Meanwhile, in Dnipro, at least one person died and 12 were injured, including a seven-month-old girl, after a Russian strike destroyed the top four floors of the apartment block on Friday evening, regional head Serhii Lysak said. Rescuers confirmed that several residents remain missing.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Dnipro attack was a reminder to Ukraine’s allies that the country needed more air defence systems.
The Ukrainian air force said on Saturday that it had downed 10 Russian drones overnight.
“This is why we constantly remind all of our partners: only a sufficient amount of high-quality air defence systems, only a sufficient amount of determination from the world at large can stop Russian terror,” Zelenskiy said.
Russian officials also reported Ukrainian attacks, with a drone strike killing five people in Russia’s Kursk region, local officials said.
Two children were among the victims of the attack in the village of Gorodishche on the Russian-Ukrainian border, governor Alexey Smirnov said on social media.
In its morning statement, the Russian ministry for defence said that six Ukrainian drones had been shot down overnight over the country’s Tver, Bryansk and Belgorod regions, as well as over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
It did not give information on the reported strike in the Kursk region.
The Ukrainian government also responded Saturday to a statement from the Belarusian military saying it had increased its forces along Ukraine’s northern border in response to what it described as security threats.
The announcement came after Belarus’ border agency claimed its troops downed a Ukrainian drone that had flown across the border to gather intelligence.
Kyiv denied the accusations, which it described as Russian propaganda.
“The Russians’ task is simple – to draw more of our forces (to the Belarusian border), Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation said in a statement. “Any information about our activity in the border area is a lie.”
Belarus’ authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko has close ties with Russia and allowed Moscow to use his country’s territory to invade Ukraine in February 2022.
It comes as Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 36 drones that Ukraine launched overnight targeting several regions in Russia’s southwest, Russia’s ministry for defence said on Sunday.
Fifteen drones were destroyed over the Kursk region that borders Ukraine and nine over the Lipetsk region, several hundred kilometres south of Moscow, ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
Four drones were destroyed each over the Voronezh and Bryansk regions in southwestern Russia and two each over the nearby Oryol and Belgorod regions.
[ Ukraine to present detailed peace plan this year as Russia warns US on drone flights ]
The governors of the Lipetsk and Bryansk regions said on their Telegram channels that there were no injuries or extensive damage as a result of the attacks.
Russian officials often do not disclose the full extent of damage inflicted by Ukrainian attacks.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Kyiv has said attacks on Russia’s military, transport and energy infrastructure are in response to Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s territory since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. – Reuters