2 dead in Ukraine from Russian attacks, 4 more in Russian-held area hit by Ukrainian drones

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv early on Sunday, setting off fires and wounding at least three civilians, while attacks on other parts of Ukraine later killed at least two people, local officials reported.

The strikes come as Ukraine’s successful drone attacks have stalled the Russian army’s advances in an expanded campaign inside Russia that has been causing fuel shortages and piling pressure on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

In Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, Kremlin-installed authorities said a Ukrainian drone strike had killed four civilians in the city of Horlivka. According to Ivan Prikhodko, the city’s Russian-appointed mayor, the city had been under fire since the early hours of Sunday.

According to Russia’s defense ministry, Russian forces overnight struck down 133 Ukrainian drones over Russia, the Black Sea and Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow forcibly annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Blasts rocked Kyiv in the early hours of Sunday, with falling debris sparking a blaze in a tower block near the historic center, according to mayor Vitali Klitschko.

Elsewhere in the capital, falling debris set fire to buildings, cars and car parks, Klitschko added. He said three people had been wounded, with one needing hospital treatment.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in his evening address on Friday that intelligence assessments indicated that Russia was preparing missiles for a large attack, saying there were indications that this could happen in the next 48 hours.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed on Sunday that its latest attack on Kyiv had struck sites linked to drone production.

Also Sunday, a drone strike on Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second-largest city in the east — killed one person and wounded at least six others, including two children, mayor Igor Terekhov reported.

In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian glide bomb killed one man and wounded at least six other people, according to mayor Ivan Fedorov.

Both Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia have been frequent targets for Russian attacks, with Zaporizhzhia — just over 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the front line — suffering heavy bombardment in recent months.

On Friday, a major Russian strike near Kyiv killed at least 10 people and wounded around 100 others, part of a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that dims the potential of reaching a diplomatic end to Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion of its neighbor.

Meanwhile, Finnish President Alexander Stubb claimed on Sunday that “Ukraine’s position is stronger than ever since the war began".

Following a call with his Ukrainian counterpart — and appearing to allude to Kyiv’s recent drone campaign that has struck major Russian energy sites and sought to choke off military supplies — Stubb wrote on X that “continued support from (Ukraine's) partners is critical to keep up the momentum."

Romanian President Nicușor Dan said on Sunday that the country's forces had shot down another drone that had breached its airspace — the third in three days. He called the incidents “inadmissible and intolerable."

“A new drone was shot down this morning, at 10:13, by an F-16 aircraft of the Romanian Air Force, over the territorial waters of Romania, in the Sulina–Chilia area,” Dan wrote in a post on X.

The day before, a drone that crossed from Ukraine into Romania was downed in an “unpopulated area” near the border, according to a Facebook post by Dan. On Friday, a drone was shot down near Padina, northeast of the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

Dan said that a formal probe into Friday's attack found the weapon to have been a Shahed-type drone commonly used by Moscow to strike Ukraine.

A series of drone incursions by Russia and Ukraine have hit Romania and other NATO members since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.