KYIV: Russian strikes killed at least two people in Ukraine on Thursday and wounded over two dozen, Kyiv said, as Moscow claimed to have captured another village in the northwestern Sumy region.
Ukrainian officials said a Russian drone strike on a residential building in the city of Zhytomyr — west of Kyiv — killed one person, while a Russian missile attack on the central city of Dnipro killed another.
The attacks came despite the US pushing for an end of the conflict and holding separate talks with both Moscow and Kyiv — and as US President Donald Trump this week said he was unhappy with Russia for “bombing like crazy.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had attacked Dnipro with a ballistic missile after a day of attacking several regions, saying it showed Russia “ignores diplomacy.”
Zelensky said in his evening address rescuers were still working at the site in Dnipro and that: “Unfortunately, one person was killed.”
The regional governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region Sergiy Lysak said the victim was a 42 year-old man and that eight people were also wounded in the attack.
Lysak also said shelling that lasted “all day” on the district of Nikopol, wounding 13 people. He published photographs of houses on fire.
Later on Thursday, the governor of the Zhytomyr region Vitaliy Bunechko said a drone strike on a “high rise building” killed one person.
“Five people are known to be wounded, including a child born in 2011,” Bunechko said, publishing a video of a residential building with a blackened wall and damaged balcony.
Zhytomyr lies some 140 kilometers (86 miles) west of Kyiv.
The attacks on Dnipro, Nikopol and Zhytomyr came after one dozen people were wounded in overnight Russian attacks on Kyiv and the southern Black Sea region of Mykolaiv.
AFP journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens and explosions ring out over the city during the attack.
“And all of this is happening almost a month after the United States proposed a complete ceasefire,” he said, adding that Russia “ignores diplomacy” and calling for a “tactic of pressure” on Moscow.
Kyiv air force said Thursday that Moscow launched 145 Iranian-made Shahed drones on Ukraine overnight, and that 85 of them were shot down by air defense.
Moscow said Kyiv had launched 42 drones into Russia at night, mostly on its border regions, but also on some regions near Moscow.
Russia also said it had captured another village in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy, where Moscow is advancing since pushing Ukrainian troops out of most of its western Kursk region.
In a statement on social media, Russia’s defense ministry said its troops had “liberated” the village of Zhuravka, just over the Ukrainian border.
The claimed Russian advances in Sumy point to the broader difficulties of the Ukrainian army that has steadily lost ground in Russia’s Kursk region after launching their surprise incursion last August.
Zelensky said Thursday that the Sumy region is “subject to constant attacks by guided aerial bombs.”
Ukraine’s most senior military official Oleksandr Syrsky warned earlier this week that Russian forces had launched an offensive in Sumy and the neighboring region of Kharkiv.
Moscow and Kyiv have stepped up their aerial attacks despite recent attempts by the United States to bring both sides to talks to secure a halt to more than three years of fighting.