Russian strikes in Ukraine kill nine

KYIV, Ukraine: Russian strikes on the frontline town of Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine left six people dead on Tuesday, regional officials said, piling pressure on a region where Moscow´s forces have been on the offensive.

The updated toll in Kupiansk brought the total killed in Ukraine that day to nine people. The attack in the northeastern region of Kharkiv near the border with Russia came after a swarm of attack drones destroyed warehouses and left one dead overnight in the western city of Lviv.

“The number of dead has increased to six people. Four men and two women were killed in Kupiansk as a result of an enemy attack from a guided aerial bomb,” the regional governor, Oleg Synegubov, said on social media.

“Emergency services continue to work at the scene of the explosion,” he added in a statement. Russian forces captured swathes of the Kharkiv region early in the invasion launched in February 2022, but Ukrainian troops have since pushed back.

In the southern town of Kherson, a policeman died when a trolleybus was hit and two passengers were wounded, said Roman Mrochko, administration chief for the major southern city recaptured from the Russians last November.