Russia and Ukraine traded deadly strikes, killing at least 10 and injuring dozens

Russia and Ukraine trade deadly strikes overnight and Saturday morning, 10 people were killed and dozens more injured, officials from both sides said on Saturday.

This attack happened when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Istanbul to discuss with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He will also meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians.

“We are working to strengthen our cooperation to ensure the real protection of lives, advance stability, and ensure security in Europe and the Middle East. Joint efforts always produce the best results,” Zelenskyy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app after arriving in Istanbul.

Russia shot down 286 drones in Ukraine overnight, 260 of which were downed, the Ukrainian Air Force said in an online statement.

Five people – three women and two men – died in the city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and 19 others were injured, said the head of the regional administration Oleksandr Hanzha. This attack destroyed the market and shop.

In the town of Sumy, not far from the border with Russia, the strike injured 11 people, said the National Police. Residential areas were affected, houses, vehicles and utility networks were damaged in the attack.

In the capital, Kyiv, a drone strike caused a fire on the first floor of a three-story office and warehouse building, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said. No injuries were reported.

In the partially-affected Donetsk region, a Russian airstrike hit a civilian car on the Kostyantynivka–Druzhkivka road on Saturday morning, killing one woman and injuring another, according to the head of the Kostyantynivka City Military Administration, Serhiy Horbunov.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had fired “long-range air and ground-based precision weapons, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles” at unspecified “military and industrial facilities and facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

At that time, the head of the captured Russian Luhansk regionLeonid Pasechnik, said that the Ukrainian army hit the railway infrastructure in the region and private houses, killing a family of three – a couple and their 8-year-old child.

The Security Service of Ukraine, also known as the SBU, says it is using drone strikes to stop production at a steel plant in the Russian city of Alchevsk in the Luhansk region, most of which is controlled by the Russian military.

The SBU said on its Facebook page that the drone raid damaged fire reactors, key workshops, distillation columns, gas pipelines and power stations that power the plant, which supplies Russia’s state tank and rail vehicle plant, Uralvagonzavod.

There was no immediate comment from Russian officials.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Russian military shot down 85 Ukrainian planes overnight in nine regions of Russia, the region connected to Crimea and the Black Sea.

In the Russian region of Rostov, on the border with Ukraine, one person died and four were injured, according to the governor of this region, Yuri Slyusar. The attack sparked a fire at an unnamed company’s warehouse, as well as another fire on a foreign-flagged dry cargo ship a few kilometers offshore, Slyusar said.

In the city of Samara Tolyatti, one person was injured, said Gov. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev. The roof of the residential building was destroyed and windows were broken in many houses, he said.