A ballistic missile attack was under way in Kyiv early Sunday, with the city’s mayor warning residents to remain in shelters. “Air defence forces are operating in the capital. Remain in shelters!”, the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. Explosions and several flashes in the sky have been reported.
The attack follows civilian deaths on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine border on Saturday. Russian strikes in Dnipropetrovsk in central-eastern Ukraine and the northern Sumy region killed two people, while Ukraine launched attacks on Volgograd and Belgorod in Russia’s southwest, and Horlivka, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, which is controlled by Moscow. Three people were killed in the attacks, regional authorities said.
In the Russian border region of Bryansk, a Ukrainian drone strike on Saturday killed two people in their car in a village near the border, the region’s acting governor Yegor Kovalchuk said on Telegram. Russia’s defence ministry, quoted by Russian news agencies, said 124 Ukrainian drones had been downed over Russian regions over a period extending from 8 am to 8pm.
More than 40 drone strikes and artillery fire had killed one person and injured one near Nikopol, according to the governor of the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine, Oleksandr Ganzha. The town, lying on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, is a frequent Russian target.
Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic said on Saturday he would resign within weeks and the country would hold early presidential and parliamentary elections, after 18 months of anti-government protests about government corruption and media censorship. Serbia is a candidate to join the European Union but it is under pressure from the West to align with EU sanctions on Russia, a step Belgrade has so far declined to take. It must also improve its rule of law, including conditions for fair elections, and root out corruption and organised crime.
Russian president Vladimir Putin and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko held talks on Friday, according to the Kremlin, and discussions were expected to have focused on the war in Ukraine. Meeting at Putin’s Valdai residence in northwestern Russia, the two leaders addressed trade and economic cooperation, the implementation of joint projects and issues of regional security. The meeting follows a warning earlier this month from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Lukashenko to remove equipment from Belarus used by Russia in its attacks on Ukraine.