KYIV: A Russian strike on Friday killed five people and wounded 25 in Ukraine’s industrial Dnipropetrovsk region, where Moscow has stepped up deadly bombardments, authorities said.
Russian forces, which invaded Ukraine early in 2022, are vying to gain a foothold in Dnipropetrovsk for the first time in the war.
Regional governor Sergiy Lysak said the attack was on the town of Samar, outside the region’s main city Dnipro in central Ukraine.
Ukraine claimed to have struck four Russian Su-34 tactical aircraft in an overnight long-range drone attack on an airbase in the Volgograd region, not far from the border between the two countries.
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Kyiv “conducted a joint special operation, as a result of which two Russian SU-34 fighter-bombers at the Marynivka airfield were destroyed and two more were damaged,” the secret service SBU said in a statement.
Russian forces earlier this week struck both Dnipro and Samar with missiles, leaving at least 23 dead.
Ukrainian military officials have said that previous Russian strikes near Samar hit Ukrainian military training facilities.
Moscow earlier this week claimed to have captured two more villages near the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Separately, authorities in the northern region of Kharkiv said Russian attacks killed one person and wounded three others, without specifying where the attack had taken place.