Kiev said at least seven people were killed in a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Vilniansk, a day after Russia said a Ukrainian drone killed five people in its border village.
Both countries said two children were killed in each attack, the deadliest day in a war that has been raging for more than two years.
Kiev also said four people were killed in eastern border villages in the Donetsk region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the death toll in Vilniansk, near the regional center of Zaporizhzhia, could rise.
“Seven people, including two children, were killed in a Russian missile attack in the Zaporizhzhia region,” Zelensky said on social media.
He called on his Western allies to speed up arms supplies, saying “any delay in decision-making in this war means loss of human lives.”
Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klimenko said 18 people, including four children, were injured in Vilnyansk.
He posted photos of a local small building burned down and blackened cars.
The head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov, earlier said that “an important infrastructure facility, a shop and residential buildings were damaged” in the attack.
Vilniansk lies 29 kilometres (18 mi) north-east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is the main regional city and is under Ukrainian control.
Russia’s attack on Vilnyansk comes hours after Moscow said five people, including two children, were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on a house in a Russian border village.
Five people killed in Russian village
Moscow said the drone struck a house in Gorodishche, a small village in Russia’s Kursk region, just metres from the Ukrainian border.
“It is a matter of great sadness for us that five people have died… including two small children. Two other family members are in critical condition,” Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov said in a post on Telegram.
He said the attack was carried out using a “copter”-style drone, a small device that can be fitted with a grenade or other explosive which is then dropped on a target.
Both sides have extensively used drones, including large self-detonating drones with a range of up to hundreds of kilometres, during the conflict that began in February 2022.
Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russian territory this year, targeting energy sites it says fuel the Russian military, as well as towns and villages across the border.
Fighting in Ukraine has intensified in multiple directions, as Russia, taking advantage of Kiev’s military lag, has launched an offensive from multiple directions.
Four people killed in eastern Ukraine
Kiev’s military said on Saturday that Moscow was attacking from several directions and that “the total number of hostile attacks along the entire border line has now reached 90.”
Deadly attacks took place in eastern villages, leaving four people dead, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday morning.
“Russians killed three people in Zarichne (village),” the head of the Donetsk region, Vadim Filyashkin, said on social media.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office later said another man, a resident of New York’s East Village, also “received fatal injuries.”
New York has been under intense attack since mid-June, as Russian forces advance north towards the city of Toretsk.
Police said they had found a woman in the central city of Dnipro who was killed a day earlier in an attack that also injured 13 people.
“Police have identified a woman killed in a missile attack in the city of Dnieper. She is a 76-year-old resident of a destroyed apartment block,” Ukraine’s National Police said in a statement.
It said the number of those injured in the attack had risen to 13, “including an infant and a pregnant woman.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
