Ukrainian air defence units were defending Kyiv against Russian drones early on Thursday for the second night running, with officials reporting a fire in a city-centre apartment building and drone fragments landing in different districts. At least two people were injured in the latest attacks, according to the AFP news agency.
A Russian air strike killed three people and injured one in the front-line town of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s east, national emergency service officials said. A post on Telegram said the strike also destroyed a one-storey administrative building. Firefighters also extinguished blazes in four buildings, according to officials.
Vadym Filashkin, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which encompasses Kostiantynivka, said on Telegram that it was time to “take a responsible decision. Evacuate to less dangerous regions of Ukraine!”, amid Russia’s latest offensive westward.
A five-year-old boy died of burns sustained in a Ukrainian drone strike on a beach in the Russian city of Kursk, regional Governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram, raising the death toll in the attack to four, including a member of Russia’s National Guard.
Russian forces advanced at key points along the front in eastern Ukraine, defeating Ukrainian units in at least six regions, including Donetsk and Kharkiv, and using missiles and drones to strike ammunition depots and airfields, the Ministry of Defence in Moscow said. It also claimed Russia captured a village in Donetsk.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he held a “substantive” conversation with Trump’s Ukraine e …