Two people were killed after Russia unleashed its second overnight mass drone attack on Ukraine in two days, authorities in Ukraine said on Friday.
Kyiv’s air force said 27 Iranian-made drones had been shot down by air defences over seven regions across the country, including around the capital.
Two people were killed in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia when a residential building was damaged in the strike, said the regional governor.
The air force also said Russian forces had fired eight missiles in eastern and central Ukraine, but offered no further details.
Friday’s attack follows a overnight drone strike on Thursday during which Russian forces targeted civilian infrastructure in northeastern Ukraine.
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That attack knocked out television and radio signals in five cities and towns, in an apparent attempt to cut people off from information, officials in Kyiv said.
Russia has carried out regular air strikes on population centres far behind the lines of its two-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Nato and senior deputies from more than 20 states, including Ireland, have condemned Russia’s plan to hold presidential elections this week in occupied areas of Ukraine, as Kyiv urged people living in those regions to avoid polling stations for their own safety.
Russia occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory, including Crimea and parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, after a decade of fighting in eastern Ukraine and two years of full-scale war.
Moscow demands that any peace deal must recognise Kremlin control over those regions, and says occupying soldiers and civilians living there will vote in elections from Friday-Sunday to further extend the 24-year rule of Russian president Vladimir Putin. – Additional reporting from Reuters
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