Russian strikes kill three in southern Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine: Russia struck areas of eastern and southern Ukraine with artillery and missiles on Friday and Saturday, killing at least three people and wounding four others, officials said.

The strikes come as both sides prepare for a gruelling winter of fighting and as Russia tries to suppress a Ukrainian counteroffensive to regain occupied territory.

Russia fired hundreds of shells into Ukrainian-controlled parts of Kherson region in the south on Friday, local governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

“The Russian military hit residential areas of the region’s settlements. As a result of Russian aggression, one person was killed and one more was wounded,” he said Saturday morning. In separate attacks, the head of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region said Russia fired a missile at a group of dachas, a type of cottage, in Kryvyi Rig -- President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown -- killing a 60-year-old man and wounding a woman.

“She is in a serious condition in hospital. The attack caused a fire, which rescuers have already extinguished,” Dnipropetrovsk governor Sergiy Lysak said Friday evening.

He later said on Saturday that Russian artillery strikes on Nikopol, a city of about 100,000 people on the river Dnipro, had killed one person.

“The enemy has once again fired on peaceful Nikopol with heavy artillery. Unfortunately, a man died as a result of the attack,” Nikopol mayor Oleksandr Sayuk said.

Russian shelling near Kupyansk in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region and strikes on Avdiivka in eastern Donetsk region wounded at least two people on Friday, officials said.

Fighting and shelling in and around Avdiivka has escalated in recent weeks as Russia tries to encircle and capture the strategically important town.