Russian drone, missile and artillery strikes against targets across large areas of Ukraine overnight killed three people and injured 51, regional authorities said Friday as President Volodymyr Zelensky met with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. File Photo by Julia Nikhinson/UPI | License Photo
Russian drone, missile and artillery strikes against targets across large areas of Ukraine overnight killed three people and injured 51, regional authorities said Friday.
The Ukraine Airforce said it shot down 27 of 44 Shahed-type drones but two people were killed in Donetsk in the east — one in Raigorodka just northeast of Slovyansk and one in Kostyantynivka — after two guided aerial bombs hit the frontline town, Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on social media. Advertisement
Filashkin said the attack on Kostyantynivka, which damaged two dozen houses, a business, power lines and cars, also injured 11 people bringing to 12 the number of civilians injured in the province in the past 24 hours.
Dnipropetrovsk provincial governor Sehii Lysak said in a social media post that one person had been killed Friday morning and 30 injured, including a 9-year-old girl and two boys aged 11 and 14, in a rocket strike on the city of Pavlograd. Advertisement
Lysak said two of the injured were in serious condition in the hospital where doctors were doing everything possible to save their lives.
Elsewhere, Lysak said an emergency worker was injured when his fire truck was struck and destroyed by a “kamikaze” drone in a so-called double-tap strike where a drone attack is followed minutes later by a second strike on the same spot, specifically to target emergency first-responders.
The 45-year-old man was in “satisfactory condition” in the hospital, Lysak said.
A man and woman were also hurt in Nikopol in an attack in which 11 houses were also damaged while Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on social media that a man and a woman were injured by Russian shelling amid fierce fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces near Vovchansk, Kupiansk and Andriivka.
Four people were injured, including two medical personnel, in Russian attacks on Kherson province in the south. Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in a post on Telegram that the medical workers were hurt when two health centers in the capital, Kherson, were struck.
Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy provinces also came under attack but no injuries were reported.
In Lviv in the far west of the country, trucks and warehouses were set ablaze by burning debris from drones downed by Ukrainian air defenses, according to Lviv Military Administration head Maksym Kozytskyi. Advertisement
The latest wave of attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday for a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group where he was expected to step up his calls for Western allies to provide more air defenses and longer-range weapons and more quickly to fight back against the Russian invasion
“We need our partners’ determination and the means to stop Russia’s aerial terror,” Zelensky said in a post on X.
“It is crucial that all the weapons from the already announced support packages finally reach the combat brigades. We also need strong long-range decisions from our partners to bring closer the just peace we are striving for.”
Seated beside U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Q. Brown and Ukraine Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, Zelensky thanked members of the 57-member-country Ramstein group for their defense deliveries but said many anti-aircraft systems that had been promised hadn’t arrived.
Ahead of the meeting, the Pentagon said Brown and Austin, who it said set up the group in 2022 shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion, “will bring together ministers of defense and senior military officials from some 50 nations to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to defend its people from Russian aggression.” Advertisement
In a press briefing Thursday, Deputy Defense Department press secretary Sabrina Singh said key areas of focus would include strengthening Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, firing up the defense-industrial bases of coalition nations to enable long-term support for Ukraine and updates on the UDCG’s capability coalitions, including the Air Force coalition.
“As Secretary Austin has said, Ukraine matters to U.S. and international security, and the efforts of the UDCG continue to play a vital role in Ukraine’s fight for freedom and sovereignty,” said Singh.
