A late-night Russian strike on the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv killed two people, the region’s governor said Friday, as both Moscow and Kyiv reported a wave of overnight aerial attacks.
Kharkiv region Governor Oleh Syniehubov said Russia launched a “series of shelling” attacks on the town of Kupyansk, close to the front lines, late on Thursday night.
“Houses and cars were damaged. A 36-year-old man was rescued from the rubble. A 64-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man died,” he wrote on the messaging app Telegram.
A separate missile attack on a residential area in the town of Chuguiv, also in the Kharkiv region, injured seven, the governor added.
“Russians shelled Chuguiv with S-300 air defense systems. It hit the ground in a residential area and smashed windows in a nine-story apartment building,” Syniehubov said.
The governor posted a picture of stores with their windows blown out and a crater in a road next to an apartment block.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 37 Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones and three missiles against its territory overnight.
“As a result of combat operations, 33 Shaheds were shot down in the Kirovograd, Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions,” it said in a post on Telegram.
Meanwhile, in Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry said it intercepted 16 Ukrainian drones in the early hours of Friday.
Fifteen were destroyed over the southern Volgograd region, the closest part of which is just over 100 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
Another Ukrainian drone was shot down over the western Belgorod border region, the Russian Defense Ministry said.