Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions and the Black Sea port city of Odesa killed at least two civilians, injured others and damaged critical infrastructure, homes and commercial buildings, regional officials said on Saturday. Oleh Synehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, said Russian shelling killed a 49-year-old man on the street near his home in Slobozhanske village. An 82-year-old woman was killed and two men injured in overnight shelling in Kharkiv city, he said on Telegram. A Russian missile attack started a fire at a civilian enterprise in an industrial district of Kharkiv city, injuring six employees, he added. In the south, three people were injured in Odesa city by a missile strike, said the regional governor, Oleh Kiper.
The reports of Russian attacks came after the Ukrainian air force said overnight that Russia had launched 13 Shahed drones towards the Kharkiv and Dnipro regions. All were downed by air defences, the air force commander said. However, falling debris injured four people and sparked a fire in an office building, Oleh Synehubov said. A 13-year-old child and a woman were being treated in hospital, he said. On Sunday, the air force said Ukrainian defence systems destroyed 23 of 24 attack drones Russia launched against Ukrainian territory.
Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian Su-25 fighter-bomber over the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, while providing no further details. “It is important to be very focused these days,” the Ukrainian president said in his nightly video address.
In the industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk, shelling injured a 57-year-old woman and damaged infrastructure in Nikopol, near the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the regional governor said. Serhiy Lysak also said two people were wounded in another attack overnight that damaged critical infrastructure and houses.
The Ukrainian village of Ocheretyne in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region has been battered by fighting, drone footage obtained by the Associated Press shows. Russian troops have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs. Ukraine’s military has acknowledged that Russia has gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3,000 before the war, but says the fighting there is continuing.
Residents have scrambled to flee the village, among them a 98-year-old woman who walked almost 10km (six miles) alone last week, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane, until she reached the Ukrainian frontline.
Russia has opened a criminal case against Volodymyr Zelenskiy and put him on a wanted list, the state news agency Tass reported on Saturday – an announcement Ukraine dismissed as evidence of Moscow’s “desperation”. Tass reported that the Russian interior ministry database showed the Ukrainian president was on a wanted list but gave no further details. Ukraine’s foreign ministry noted Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, was subject to arrest under an international criminal court warrant.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, heads to Paris on Sunday for a rare visit, with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, set to press him to reduce trade imbalances and try to convince him to use his influence on Russia over the war in Ukraine. Xi’s two-day stay in France – his first trip to Europe in five years – comes at a time of growing trade tensions between Europe and China.
