Russia's drone strikes kill seven across Ukraine as UN peace push stalls
Russia's round-the-clock attacks on targets across Ukraine killed at least seven people and wounded more than 50 others, officials said on Monday, as Moscow hit apartment buildings, offices, data centres and scientific facilities. The strikes were part of the continuing drone campaign that Ukraine says is aimed at wearing down its resistance and damaging the country's economy.
The attacks came after a week of diplomatic efforts at the United Nations to push negotiations on ending Moscow's invasion, which began four and a half years ago. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested there was little chance of quick progress after recent Ukrainian attacks, including during Russia's recent parliamentary elections. "Ukraine will have to pay a price for the actions that have taken place in recent months," Peskov told reporters. "That is happening right now."
In the Kyiv region, Russian drone attacks killed four people and wounded eight, officials said. In the capital, a woman was killed in a strike on the Shevchenkivskyi district on Monday afternoon, according to the Kyiv city military administration. The strike damaged a building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the latest cultural landmark in the capital to be hit. Russian forces also struck a pharmaceutical company and gas stations in Kyiv. Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had hit two data centres in the city as well as the gas stations.
Elsewhere, a drone struck an office centre in central Dnipro during working hours, killing three people and wounding at least 12, local authorities said. In Kharkiv, a strike on a nine-storey apartment building wounded 43 people, including 11 children, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. In the Chernihiv region, four people, including two teenage girls, were hurt when a Russian drone hit a residential area on Sunday evening, regional military administration head Viacheslav Chaus said. Russia's Defence Ministry also said a Nova Poshta postal service distribution hub was struck in Odesa, and that the military had hit a cargo ship in the Black Sea and another in the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk. The strikes are aimed at curbing Ukraine's grain exports, though they may also create food shortages in countries that depend on Ukrainian imports. Russian aerial attacks regularly hit civilian areas, although Moscow says it targets only military-related sites.
On the battlefield, positions have changed little since last year, partly because swarms of drones have severely restricted troop movements. But Ukraine said its forces had made gains in a recent offensive, code-named Operation Vivaldi, on part of the 1,250-kilometre front line. Ukraine's Third Army Corps said it had recaptured another 51 square kilometres from Russian forces, taking the total retaken to 176 square kilometres since the offensive began several months ago. The corps said it had converted Soviet-era BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers into kamikaze vehicles to blow up strong Russian fortifications, and had also used ground robots to attack Russian positions. The reported gains were in the Donetsk region, where the larger Russian army has been trying to advance.
Russian officials made no immediate comment on Ukraine's claim. At the same time, Russia's Defence Ministry said its troops had captured the villages of Novovodiane in the Donetsk region and Ulanove in the northern Sumy region. None of the battlefield claims could be independently verified. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had carried out long-range strikes on two defence plants in Russia's Tula and Voronezh regions and on oil facilities in the Krasnodar region. Local emergency officials in Krasnodar said Ukrainian drone attacks overnight caused fires at three infrastructure facilities, without naming them. Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defences had shot down 254 Ukrainian drones overnight.
The latest wave of strikes underlined the continuing intensity of the war, with Russian attacks causing deaths and injuries across several Ukrainian cities even as Ukraine reported gains on parts of the front and fresh long-range strikes inside Russia.
