Ukrainian army evacuates towns in Dnipropetrovsk region

People have been advised to leave the villages voluntarily for several months, Lysak added. The affected areas are near the border with the Donetsk region. Nearly 400 children had already been brought to safety, it was reported. The decision was unavoidable because Russia had been directing bombs and drones at the people, Lysak wrote. He stated that the forced evacuation will take a month. Ukraine has been defending itself against a Russian invasion with Western assistance for more than three years.

Girl died on the way to hospital

A 12-year-old girl was killed in nighttime Russian attacks, the Ukrainian rescue service reported. The child's parents were injured. Local residents pulled the 12-year-old girl from the rubble in the Dnipropetrovsk region, but she died on the way to the hospital. Two adults and a 6-year-old girl were also injured in the incident in the Hubynyskiy municipality, said the region's military governor, Serhiy Lysak. He also reported another casualty and damage to private homes and infrastructure elsewhere in the region. In the town of Nikopol, also in the Dnipropetrovsk region, a 47-year-old woman was injured, according to a local official.

Two dead in Belgorod due to Ukrainian attacks

In the Russian region of Belgorod, two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike. Three others were injured, the region's governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, wrote on Telegram. A car with five passengers on a highway was hit, Gladkov said. Three more people were injured. In total, the Ukrainian Air Force reported 100 drones fired by Russian forces into Ukraine. Russia, for its part, reported intercepting 91 Ukrainian drones.

According to local authorities, a woman was injured in a Russian drone attack on Kyiv overnight into Tuesday. A recreation center in the northeast of the capital burned down. According to the head of Kyiv's military administration, Timur Tkachenko, air defenses were active from around 1:00 a.m. local time to repel the Russian drones. Alarm sirens had sounded beforehand. Eyewitnesses reported hearing explosions.

20 injured in Kharkiv, 16 in Horlivka

On Tuesday evening, at least 20 people were injured in a Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, according to authorities. "Explosions can be heard in the city," Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram. Several districts were affected by the attacks. An Iranian-made combat drone landed next to a hospital. Kharkiv, a city of one million inhabitants before the war, is located in eastern Ukraine close to the Russian border. The city is therefore particularly frequently targeted by Russian airstrikes.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, drones also attacked the cities of Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih, as well as the Kherson region. At least one person was killed in Dnipro, according to regional governor Serhiy Lysak. Several fires were burning in the city.

The Russian occupation administration of the Donetsk region, in turn, reported 16 injuries following an alleged Ukrainian artillery attack on the town of Horlivka. According to the report, the Ukrainian army shelled the important railway junction with rocket artillery. These reports could not initially be independently confirmed.

Mutual drone attacks

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the Russian armed forces fired 100 drones at Ukraine overnight. Air defenses shot down 37 drones, the air force announced on Telegram. Another 47 drones disappeared from radar without reaching their targets. This is usually caused by interference from electronic air defense systems – i.e., jammers. The attacks caused damage in the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kyiv regions.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian air defenses destroyed 91 Ukrainian drones overnight. Of these, 40 drones were shot down over the Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, the ministry said in Moscow. Two drones were intercepted over the Moscow region, the others over western and southern Russian regions and the annexed Crimean peninsula. In its statement on the Telegram short message service, the ministry did not specify whether any damage was caused by the drone strikes. It also only stated the number of drones destroyed, not the total number of drones used by Ukraine to launch attacks.

Ukrainian troops advanced into the Kursk region more than eight months ago in a surprise counteroffensive. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared over the weekend that the Russian army had completely pushed back Ukrainian forces from the region.