A Ukrainian child has been killed after a Russian missile attack, as Moscow claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine.
Russian troops launched some 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine overnight on Friday and into Saturday, the Ukrainian air force said.
A nine-year-old girl was killed by the strike on the front-line village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhzhia region. A 16-year-old was also injured, Zaporizhzhia’s governor, Ivan Fedorov, said.
He said “shockwaves” from the blast also damaged houses, cars and outbuildings.
The air force said three of the missiles and 42 drones were destroyed by air defences, while another 30 drones failed to reach their targets without causing damage.
Meanwhile, 14 people were injured, including four children, after Ukrainian drones struck apartment buildings in the Russian town of Rylsk and the village of Artakovo in the western Kursk region, local acting governor Alexander Khinshtein said.
It comes as Russian forces have reportedly captured two villages in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Sumy regions.
Russian state news agency RIA reported that Novopil in the eastern Donetsk region and Vodolagy in the northeastern Sumy region were captured on Saturday, citing the Russian defence ministry.
Sky News could not independently verify the battlefield report.
Earlier this week, Moscow claimed to take multiple other settlements in the same two regions, as well as Stroivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
As a result of Russian gains, Ukrainian authorities in Sumy ordered mandatory evacuations in 11 more settlements – bringing the total number of settlements under evacuation orders in Sumy, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, to 213.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday some 50,000 Russian troops had amassed in the area with the intention of launching an offensive to carve out a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.
Russia currently controls almost all of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, more than 70% of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and a small part of the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
The barrage of Russian aerial assaults has meant Ukraine’s need for ammunition has become more urgent than ever.
Russia has offered Ukraine a second round of peace talks on 2 June in Istanbul, Turkey.
Andrii Yermark, a top adviser to Mr Zelenskyy, said Kyiv was ready to resume direct peace talks but that the Kremlin should provide a promised memorandum setting out its position on ending the more than three-year war, before the two delegations sit down to negotiate.
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Mr Zelenskyy added that Russia was “undermining diplomacy” by withholding the document.
“For some reason, the Russians are concealing this document. This is an absolutely bizarre position. There is no clarity about the format,” he wrote on Telegram.
Moscow previously said it would share its memorandum during the talks.
