KYIV: Russian attacks on eastern and southern Ukraine killed two people and wounded 10 others, officials said Wednesday, as Kyiv called for Patriot air defense systems to battle a surge in missile strikes.
Moscow has escalated its aerial attacks on Ukraine in the past few weeks, targeting key infrastructure including power stations in retaliation for fatal bombardment of Russia’s border regions.
A 55-year-old man was killed by artillery fire in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region head Sergiy Lysak said.
The governor of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, which is partially occupied by Russia, said one woman had been killed in a drone attack on the village of Mykhailivka.
Ukrainian forces retook swathes of the Black Sea territory in late 2022 but Russia has been shelling recaptured towns and villages since.
“A 61-year-old local resident was fatally wounded in her own home,” the official, Oleksandr Prokudin, wrote on social media.
The governor of the neighboring Mykolaiv region said later that a Russian ballistic missile had struck the coastal territory, leaving six wounded, with one in a critical condition.
Separately, the governor of the eastern Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegubov, said three men and one woman all over the age of 50 were injured in separate strikes on towns and villages in the region.
The mayor of the region’s capital, also called Kharkiv, said that a strike on a residential neighborhood had left “dead and wounded,” but did not give details about casualties.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 13 Iranian-designed attack drones at Ukraine overnight and that 10 were downed over the Kharkiv region, the neighboring Sumy region and near the capital Kyiv.
During an online briefing Wednesday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for urgent deliveries of air defense systems to ward off an increase in ballistic missile strikes.
“The peculiarity of the current Russian attacks is the intensive use of ballistic missiles that can reach targets at extremely high speeds, leaving little time for people to take cover and causing significant destruction,” Kuleba said.
“Patriot and other similar systems are defensive by definition. They are designed to protect lives, not take them,” he said.
Ukraine has been forced onto the defensive in the past few months as it struggles with ammunition shortages and a hold up to a $60 billion aid package from Washington.
It has also been forced to concede ground to Russia on the eastern front in recent months, warning earlier this week of “difficult” battles around the eastern city of Chasiv Yar.
Russia meanwhile announced that its air defense systems had shot down 18 rockets near the border city of Belgorod, which has recently seen an uptick in fatal Ukrainian attacks.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said one person was wounded during the barrage.
Two dead, 10 wounded in Russian attacks on Ukraine
https://arab.news/49etb
Two dead, 10 wounded in Russian attacks on Ukraine
- Moscow has escalated its aerial attacks on Ukraine in the past few weeks, targeting key infrastructure including power stations
- A 55-year-old man was killed by artillery fire in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Nikopol
Trump invites Colombia’s Petro to White House after earlier threat of military action
- Relations between Trump and Petro have been frosty since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2025
WASHINGTON/BOGOTA: Days after threatening Colombia with military action, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said arrangements were being made for the country’s President Gustavo Petro to visit the White House, following a call between the two leaders. Trump and Petro said they discussed relations between the two countries in their first call since the US president on Sunday said that a US military operation focused on Colombia’s government “sounds good” to him. That threat followed Trump ordering the US capture of the president of neighboring Venezuela, who was flown to the US to face drug and weapons charges.
“It was a great honor to speak with the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had. I appreciated his call and tone, and look forward to meeting him in the near future,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump added “arrangements are being made” for a meeting in Washington between himself and Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, but gave no specific date for a meeting.
“We have spoken by phone for the first time since he became president,” Petro told supporters gathered at a rally in Bogota meant to celebrate Colombia’s sovereignty, adding he had requested a restart of dialogue between the two countries.
A source in Petro’s office told Reuters the call was “cordial” and “respectful.”
Relations between Trump and Petro have been frosty since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2025.
Trump has repeatedly accused the administration of Petro, without evidence, of enabling a steady flow of cocaine into the US, imposing sanctions on the Colombian leader in October.
On Sunday Trump referred to Petro as “a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
The US in September had revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York following a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly and called on US soldiers to “disobey the orders of Trump.”
Petro, who has been a vocal opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza, had accused Trump of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and called for “criminal proceedings” over US missile attacks on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.
The Trump administration has carried out more than 30 strikes against suspected drug boats since September, in a campaign that has killed at least 110 people.
