Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Ukraine said Wednesday that Russian strikes on a front-line town in the east of the country killed at least five people and wounded eight more just hours after a fatal drone attack near Kyiv.
The large-scale Russian drone barrage overnight killed two people near Kyiv, including a Ukrainian journalist, her news agency said.
AFP journalists in Kyiv heard explosions ringing out after the Ukrainian air force said Russia fired a barrage of 177 drones of various types at targets across the country.
Russian forces have been clawing their way towards the town of Kostyantynivka and intensively bombarding the civilian hub in the eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia.
“At least five people were killed and eight were wounded in the strikes on Kostyantynivka,” the governor of the Donetsk region Vadim Filashkin wrote on social media.
The strikes attest to the increasingly difficult fighting for Ukrainian forces that are facing down a better-resourced and large Russian army across the sprawling front line.
The attack on Kostyantynivka, which had an estimated pre-war population of around 67,000 people, came after Russia launched dozens of drones overnight in an aerial assault that damaged Ukrainian energy facilities and killed two people near the Ukrainian capital.
The Ukrinform news agency announced Wednesday afternoon that its journalist Tetiana Kulyk was among those killed in the attack.
“Her untimely death has shocked her colleagues and is a huge loss for the agency,” the agency said in a statement.