Tensions escalated further on Friday as deadly airstrikes and drone attacks between Ukraine and Russia left multiple casualties on both sides, including women in a maternity hospital in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
According to official reports, Ukrainian drone and artillery attacks killed three civilians in Russia, while Russian bombings in eastern Ukraine injured at least nine people and forced the evacuation of a maternity centre.
Russia said its air defences intercepted 155 Ukrainian drones overnight, in what is believed to be one of the largest drone operations to date. Ukrainian forces reportedly targeted an aircraft factory near Moscow and a missile manufacturing plant, according to Ukrainian military officials.
Local officials in Russia confirmed that one person died in the Lipetsk region and another in Tula from drone strikes. A third person was later killed in Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border, following Ukrainian shelling.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned Russia’s continued airstrikes after a medical facility in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was hit overnight.
“Among the wounded are women in a maternity hospital — mothers with newborns and women recovering from surgery,” Zelensky wrote on social media. “Fortunately, no children were injured. Russia is targeting life itself, even in the very places where it begins.”
An AFP journalist on the ground in Kharkiv reported seeing a woman clutching her baby in an ambulance during evacuation efforts.
In a separate attack later in the day, Russia launched a strike on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, wounding at least eight people, local authorities confirmed.
These attacks come after a week of intense bombardments, which the UN said led to the highest number of civilian casualties in Ukraine in a single month since Russia invaded in February 2022.
While Western leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have proposed deploying a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine once a ceasefire is achieved, Moscow firmly rejected the idea.
“We will not allow any European troops near our borders,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, warning that such a move would be seen as a direct provocation.
Ukraine’s military intelligence also claimed responsibility for a gas pipeline explosion in Russia’s Tyumen region, allegedly aimed at disrupting fuel supplies to military bases.
On the front lines, Russian forces continue advancing. Moscow’s Ministry of Defence announced the capture of another village in eastern Donetsk, one of the four regions Russia claims to have annexed in 2022 despite international condemnation.
With both Kyiv and Moscow ramping up air assaults and territorial offensives, diplomatic efforts remain stalled, and civilians on both sides continue to bear the brunt of the conflict.
