Three killed by Russian bombing in Ukraine, Kiev attacked at night

KIEV (Reuters) – Russian bombing killed three people in Ukraine on Thursday and wounded four others in Kiev, Ukrainian officials said, after the capital was attacked for the third night in a row.

An 85-year-old woman and a man in his 40s were killed in southern Ukraine, and a 60-year-old man was killed in the north, hours after a nighttime drone strike in the Kyiv region.

Neither Russian attacks nor the fighting in Ukraine abated this week, when NATO leaders discussed the security threats posed by Moscow at a summit in Lithuania and offered new military aid packages for Ukraine.

All 20 drones fired at the capital and surrounding area overnight were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, the Air Force said, as well as two Kalibr missiles fired at other parts of the country.

The Kyiv Interior Ministry said two people suffered smoke inhalation during the fires caused by falling debris, and two people were wounded by shrapnel.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person had died in a fire in the capital overnight, but the ministry said the cause was still under investigation.

“Tonight, Russian terrorists once again resorted to a massive attack,” said Ruslan Kravchenko, governor of the Kiev region. “Very bad night,” British Ambassador Melinda Symons wrote on Twitter.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said a missile and several drones were shot down in the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, where falling debris damaged several buildings.

The governor of the region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said the 85-year-old woman was killed when Russian forces shelled the village of Myklesky in the southern Kherson region this afternoon (0900 GMT).

Governor Yury Malashko said the man, in his 40s, was killed in shelling on the town of Orekiv in the southern Zaporizhia region.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said that the third person who was killed in the Russian bombing is a 60-year-old citizen from the village of Bubevka in the northern district of the Sumy region.

Russia, which launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has not commented on the latest attacks.

Although Kiev says its forces have made progress in the east and south since launching a counteroffensive in June, Russia still occupies large swathes of territory, and Zelensky said the counteroffensive has been slower than he initially hoped.

(Additional reporting by Olena Harmash, Ron Bobisky, Aleksandar Kozuchar, and Anna Proshnica); Edited by Timothy Heritage

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