Strikes on Ukraine as Zelenskiy visits Turkey for talks
Ukrainian officials said that 5 people died and 30 people were injured in Russia’s drone attack on Ukraine.
The attacks took place while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was traveling to Istanbul to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
He will also meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement on Saturday that Russia fired 286 UAVs at Ukraine during the night, 260 of which were shot down.
Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the regional military administration, said five people, including three women and two men, were killed and 19 others were injured, including a 14-year-old girl, in the city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
The National Police said that 11 people, including a 15-year-old child, were injured in the attack in the city of Sumy, close to the Russian border.
Residential areas were hit in the attack, houses, cars and public service networks were damaged.
Ukrainian State Emergency Service said that a drone attack caused a fire on the first floor of a three-storey office and warehouse building in the capital Kiev. There was no loss of life.
Russia’s defense ministry claimed in a statement on Saturday that its forces had fired “long-range air- and ground-based precision weapons, as well as attack drones” at “military-industrial and energy facilities used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine”.
The Russian military shot down 85 Ukrainian drones overnight over nine Russian regions, the annexed Crimea region and the Black Sea, the ministry said in a separate statement.
One person was killed and four others were injured in Russia’s Rostov region on the border with Ukraine, regional governor Yuri Slyusar said.
Slyusar said the attack sparked a fire at the warehouse facility of an unnamed logistics company and sparked another fire on a foreign-flagged dry cargo ship a few kilometers off the coast.
Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said that one person was injured in the city of Tolyatti in the Samara region.
He said the roof of a residential building was damaged and the windows of many apartments were broken.
