Overnight attacks in Russia and Ukraine killed 10 people and wounded dozens more on Saturday, hours before President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Istanbul for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine exchanged deadly attacks overnight and Saturday morning, killing 10 people and wounding several dozen others, officials from both sides said Saturday.
The attacks came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Istanbul for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He will also meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians.
“We are working to strengthen our partnership to ensure the real protection of lives, advance stability and ensure security in Europe and the Middle East. Joint efforts always yield the best results,” Zelenskyy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app after arriving in Istanbul.
Russia shot down 286 drones in Ukraine overnight, 260 of which were shot down, 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 were wounded, the 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, an attack injured 11 people, the National Police said. Residential areas were hit and houses, cars and utility networks were damaged in the attack.
In the capital Kiev, a drone strike caused a fire on the ground floor of a three-story office and warehouse building, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. No casualties are reported.
In the partially occupied Donetsk region, a Russian drone strike hit a civilian car on the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka road on Saturday morning, killing one woman and injuring another, according to the head of the Kostyantynivka City Military Administration, Serhiy Horbunov.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Saturday that its forces fired “long-range air-based and ground-based precision weapons, as well as attack drones” at “unspecified military-industrial and energy facilities used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, the Russian-installed head of the occupied Luhansk region, Leonid Pasechnik, said Ukrainian forces hit rail infrastructure in the region and private homes, killing a family of three — a couple and their 8-year-old child.
Ukraine’s Security Service, also known as the SBU, claimed it used drone strikes to halt production at a metallurgical plant in the Russian-occupied town of Alchevsk in the Luhansk region, most of which is controlled by Russian forces.
The SBU said on its Facebook page that the drone hit damaged furnaces, main production workshops, distillation columns, gas pipelines and electrical substations supplying the plant, which supplies Russia’s state-owned tank and rail car factory, Uralvagonzavod.
There was no immediate comment from Russian officials.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the Russian military overnight shot down 85 Ukrainian drones over nine Russian regions, the annexed Crimean region and the Black Sea.
In Russia’s Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, one person was killed and four were injured, 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 at a dry cargo ship flying a foreign flag several kilometers off the coast, Slyusar said.
In the city of Tolyatti in the Samara region, one person was injured, governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. The roof of an apartment building was damaged and windows were broken in several apartments, he said.
By VOLODYMYR YURCHUK Associated Press
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