Cross-border attacks intensified on Friday, with Ukrainian drone and shelling attacks killing three people in Russia, according to Russian officials.
Meanwhile, Russian bombardments in eastern Ukraine wounded nine and forced the evacuation of a maternity centre in Kharkiv.
Russia’s defence ministry reported intercepting 155 Ukrainian drones overnight, following a series of nightly Russian strikes that have heavily targeted Kyiv.
Local officials confirmed one fatality in the Lipetsk region and another in the Tula region due to drone attacks.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region later announced that Ukrainian shelling killed an additional civilian in the border area.
Escalating Aerial Strikes and Peacekeeping Rejection
Both Kyiv and Moscow have ramped up their aerial assaults recently as the Kremlin continues its three-year invasion, rejecting international calls for a halt.
The Kremlin on Friday reiterated its opposition to any European peacekeeping force in Ukraine. This came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron stated that Kyiv’s allies had a “plan that is ready to go and initiate in the hours after a ceasefire.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moscow would not accept any European troops “near our border.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Rome seeking allied support this week, confirmed that a medical facility was hit in the overnight attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
He stated on social media, “Among the wounded are women in a maternity hospital—mothers with newborns, women recovering from surgery.”
Zelensky noted that “fortunately, no children were injured,” adding that “Russia is targeting life itself—even in the very places where it begins.”
An AFP reporter witnessed a woman cradling her newborn in an ambulance after being evacuated from the facility. Later in the morning, the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa was struck, injuring eight people.
Rising Casualties and Russian Advances
Over the past week, Moscow has launched its most extensive drone and missile barrages against Ukraine since the invasion began in February 2022.
The United Nations has reported that Russia’s intensifying attacks pushed the number of Ukrainian civilian casualties (killed and wounded) to a three-year high in June.
Concurrently, Russian forces have been advancing along the front line that stretches for hundreds of kilometres through eastern and southern Ukraine.
On Friday, Moscow announced that its forces had captured another village in the eastern Donetsk region, a territory the Kremlin claimed to have annexed along with three other regions in late 2022.
