KYIV: Russian attacks killed two people on the right bank of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region Friday, a day after Kyiv acknowledged its foothold on the left bank was mostly destroyed.

Ukraine managed to establish a small bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnipro river that cuts through the Kherson region last year in an attempt to create a buffer zone against Russian attacks.

But on Thursday, the military acknowledged that while fighting was still ongoing there, “most of the main positions of Ukrainian troops” in the village of Krynky where it had a foothold had been completely destroyed.

In the town of Bilozerka, about five kilometres (three miles) inland from the Dnipro river, “massive strikes by Russian rocket artillery” left two dead, Kherson region’s governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Russian forces kill five in east Ukraine, officials say

At least five others were injured, including a paramedic who was hit by a drone while helping the injured, he added.

Russian forces captured swathes of the Kherson region when they invaded in February 2022 but Ukrainian troops forced Moscow to withdraw its troops from the right bank later that year.

The Kremlin claims the Kherson region as its own and its forces on the opposite bank of the Dnipro river have continued to shell civilian areas.

Separately, in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region, an Iskander missile attack injured at least nine people including a 14-year-old boy, the interior ministry said.