KYIV: Russia said Thursday it had captured another village in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy, where Moscow is advancing since pushing Ukrainian troops out of most of its western Kursk region.
The Russian claims came after Ukrainian officials said 12 people had been wounded in a drone attack on the central industrial city of Nikopol.
In a statement on social media, Russia’s defence ministry said its troops had “liberated” the village of Zhuravka, just over the Ukrainian border.
The claimed Russian advances in Sumy point to the broader difficulties of the Ukrainian army that steadily lost ground in Russia’s Kursk region after launching their surprise incursion last August.
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Ukraine’s most senior military official Oleksandr Syrsky warned earlier this week that Russian forces had launched an offensive in Sumy and the neighbouring region of Kharkiv.
The governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region said Russia had attacked Nikopol with a drone and that a 16-year-old teenager was in a serious condition.
That attack came after around one dozen people wounded in overnight Russian attacks on Kyiv and the southern Black Sea region of Mykolaiv.
AFP journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens and explosions ring out over the city during the attack.
The air force said that Russia had attacked with 145 drones, including the Iranian-designed Shahed, and that 85 were downed by air defence units.
Officials posted images of rescue workers in Mykolaiv evacuating the wounded from the scene of the attack and digging through the debris.
Moscow and Kyiv have stepped up their aerial attacks despite recent attempts by the United States to bring both sides to talks to secure a halt to more than three years of fighting.
Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022, meanwhile said it had downed 42 Ukrainian drones over western and southern regions of the country.
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