Fresh cross-border strikes left civilians dead on both sides of the front, with Ukrainian attacks inside Russia killing at least nine people and Russian attacks across Ukraine claiming at least five, according to officials in the two countries.
The latest exchange underscores how Moscow and Kyiv appear to be widening the scale and intensity of their attacks nearly four-and-a-half years into a war that has settled into a punishing grind.
In Ukraine, the human toll has mounted sharply this year. Civilian casualties have surged as Russia has expanded its use of long-range missiles that are difficult to intercept, according to United Nations data.
Ukraine, for its part, has carried out successive waves of retaliatory strikes on Russian territory, including attacks on energy sites and retail warehouses, as it seeks to increase pressure on Moscow to enter negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s offensive.
In Russia’s Belgorod region along the Ukrainian border, Ukrainian strikes earlier killed four people, including a 13-year-old girl who was wounded near a playground, acting governor Alexander Shuvaev said.
“The 13-year-old girl was gravely wounded. Medics who arrived at the scene took all possible measures to save her, but her injuries were not incompatible with life,” he said.
Elsewhere, a separate drone attack on Russia’s Saratov region, which borders Kazakhstan, killed two people. In another incident, three people died when a Ukrainian drone struck a car in Russia’s Udmurtia region — more than 1,000 kilometres from the front line — acting governor Olga Abramova said.
“This act is monstrous in its senselessness. These people were definitely not a military target,” she said.
In Ukraine, Russian strikes killed two people in the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, and at least one person each in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to regional authorities.
In a separate attack, a Russian strike demolished a postal terminal in the northern Kharkiv region, killing a postal worker, mail operator Nova Poshta said.
Diplomatic efforts have stalled. US-led talks aimed at ending what has become Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II have been effectively frozen since February, after the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran.
Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians.
