On Sunday, a Russian drone killed three older women riding a bus in the contested Sumy region, while a 550-lb bomb landed on a man’s house in Donetsk, killing him and wounding three others.
At least seven civilians were killed over the weekend as Moscow’s forces stepped up their strikes across the country.
Ukraine’s air defense forces reported an onslaught of “enemy drones in Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, and Cherkasy regions,” according to a Telegram post from the Air Force.
As of 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, air defense forces reported shooting down 78 of 83 incoming Shahed-type UAVs and other types of drones in the north, south, east, and center of the country.
“The enemy attacked a bus with civilians with a drone,” the regional prosecutor’s office posted on Sunday afternoon, alongside pictures of the destroyed vehicle.
“Three civilians were killed,” the regional authorities said, adding the victims were all women, aged from 66 to 78.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region on Saturday, a 66-year-old man was killed by Russian air strikes as he walked through a cemetery.
On Sunday, Russian forces launched more than 15 air strikes on the area around Nikopol district, injuring a 54-year-old man.
Meanwhile, Russian forces dropped a 250 kg (550-lbs) FAB-250 bomb on a civilian neighborhood of the town of Illinivka in the Donetsk region on Sunday, killing one and wounding three others.
The regional prosecutor’s office posted on Telegram that the air strike’s victims in the Kramatorsk district were a 59-year-old man who was killed, and his 56-year-old wife and neighbors aged 45 and 57 were injured. The attack occurred at about 4 p.m. on Sunday.
“Private homes were at the epicenter of the strike,” the report said, adding that the victims suffered traumatic brain injuries and broken bones.
The day before, Russian mortar attacks and killed two others in the Kostiantynivka and Myrnohrad areas of Donetsk
While the occupied southeastern region of Donetsk has been under fire almost continuously since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the northern Sumy region has become a flashpoint more recently, as Russian and Ukrainian forces trade gains there and in the bordering Russian region of Kursk.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Kursk Military Unit on Sunday said that its forces had liberated a village in Sumy, in the Khotin community.
According to the spokesperson, “Military units and subdivisions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, which are part of the forces and resources of the Kursk Military Unit, as well as the forces and resources of the senior commander, have liberated the village of Kindrativka in the Sumy Region. Stabilization measures are currently underway.”
As the path toward meaningful peace talks has been stalled by Moscow, Russia has called on Ukraine to effectively cede four Eastern regions plus Crimea that Moscow claims to have annexed, while Kyiv has demanded that it will preserve its pre-invasion territorial integrity.