Written by Bogdan Kochubey
KIEV (Reuters) – Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions and the Black Sea port city of Odessa killed at least two civilians, set a food factory on fire and damaged other infrastructure, homes and commercial buildings on Saturday, regional officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia used eight missiles of various types and nearly 70 guided aerial bombs against communities and front-line positions during the day, after the Ukrainian air force shot down 13 Shahed drones targeting the Kharkiv and Dnipro regions during the night.
Zelensky said that Moscow has no desire for peace. “Russia can only be forced to leave Ukraine alone,” he said in his evening video address. He said that the global peace summit to be held in Switzerland next June – without Russia – “must succeed.”
He added that the Ukrainian 110th Mechanized Brigade shot down a Russian Su-25 bomber over the eastern Donetsk region, which is one of four regions in Ukraine that Moscow says it has annexed.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday that Moscow had seized control of 547 square kilometers of territory this year.
Oleh Sinyhopov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said Russian bombing killed a 49-year-old man in the street near his home in the village of Slobozhansky. He wrote on the Telegram application that an 82-year-old woman was killed and two men were wounded in a night bombing of the city of Kharkiv.
He added that a Russian missile attack set fire to a commercial building in an industrial area in Kharkiv, wounding six employees. Local prosecutors identified it as a food factory.
In the south, Odessa Region Governor Oleh Kiper said that three people were injured in the city as a result of a missile attack.
Reuters could not immediately verify reports of casualties and damage.
An air force commander said air defenses shot down all 13 attack drones overnight, but Sinyhopov said falling debris injured four people and started a fire in an office building.
In the Dnipropetrovsk industrial region, bombing injured a 57-year-old woman and damaged infrastructure in Nikopol, near the Russian-controlled Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. Two others were wounded in another attack overnight, the region’s governor, Serhiy Lysak, said.
(Reporting, Writing by Eileen Monaghan in Washington; Additional reporting by Ron Bubiski and Olena Harmash; Editing by Kevin Levy and Ross Russell)
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