KYIV: At least five people were killed and around 20 wounded in Russian strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region, Ukraine authorities said Monday.
"As of now, 4 people have died" in Shevchenkivsky, where part of a residential high-rise building was destroyed, said Igor Klymenko, the minister of internal affairs.
He added that one person had also been killed in Bila Tserkva.
Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war, targeting energy and military infrastructure sometimes hundreds of kilometers from the front line.
Kyiv says the strikes are a fair response to deadly Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians.
At least four people were killed in an overnight Russian strike on an apartment building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, while a strike on a Ukrainian army training ground later in the day killed three others, officials said.
In wide-ranging remarks, Syrsky conceded that Russia had some advantages in drone warfare, particularly in making fiber-optic drones that are tethered and difficult to jam.
“Here, unfortunately, they have an advantage in both the number and range of their use,” he said.
He also claimed that Ukraine still held 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) of territory in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched an audacious cross-border incursion last August.
“These are our pre-emptive actions in response to a possible enemy offensive,” he said.
Russia said in April that it had gained full control of the Kursk region and denies that Kyiv has a presence there.
Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its invasion in 2022 — in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal to prolong its full-scale offensive on the country and to seize more territory.
The Russian army said Sunday that it had captured the village of Petrivske in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region.
Russian forces also sent at least 47 drones and fired three missiles toward Ukraine between late Saturday and early Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said.
