Russian forces have continued to hammer Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, launching a deadly attack on the industrial city of Samar for the second time in three days.
Friday’s missile attack killed five people and injured 23 others in southeastern Samar – located outside the region’s main city, Dnipro – said regional governor Sergiy Lysak in a post on Telegram.
At least four of the wounded were in severe condition and were taken to hospital, he added.
The attack followed missile strikes earlier this week on both Dnipro and Samar, which killed at least 23, as Russian forces attempted to gain a foothold in Dnipropetrovsk for the first time in over three years of war.
Officials gave no immediate details about the damage inflicted on Samar, where an attack on an unidentified infrastructure facility on Tuesday killed two people.
Moscow earlier this week claimed to have captured two more villages near the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Separately, authorities in Ukraine’s northern region of Kharkiv said Russian attacks killed one person and wounded three others.
Hundreds of kilometres to the south, in the Kherson region, authorities urged residents on Friday to prepare for extended periods without power after a Russian attack hit a key energy facility.
Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram that “Russians decided to plunge the region into darkness”.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 363 long-range drones and eight missiles overnight into Friday, claiming that air defences stopped all but four of the drones and downed six cruise missiles.
Russia’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, said 39 Ukrainian drones were downed in several regions overnight, including 19 over the Rostov region and 13 over the Volgograd region.
‘Find a path’ in peace talks
The continued attacks on Dnipropetrovsk came as President Vladimir Putin said that he intended to scale back military expenditure and also indicated he was ready for a new round of peace negotiations with Ukraine.
The Russian president said his country was ready to reduce the military budget in the long term, owing to budgetary pressures and the increased defence spending having fuelled inflation.
Speaking to reporters in Minsk, Belarus, on Friday, he alluded to a new round of peace negotiations with Ukraine, potentially in Istanbul, although the time and venue had yet to be agreed.
He acknowledged that the peace proposals from Russia and Ukraine “are two absolutely contradictory memorandums”, but added, “That’s why negotiations are being organised and conducted, in order to find a path to bringing them closer together.”
Putin added that the two sides’ negotiators were in constant contact and that Russia was ready to return the bodies of 3,000 more Ukrainian soldiers.
He also said relations between Russia and the United States were beginning to stabilise, attributing the improvement to efforts by US President Donald Trump.
“In general, thanks to President Trump, relations between Russia and the United States are beginning to level out in some ways,” said Putin.
Trump on Friday suggested progress may be on the horizon regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“We’re working on that one,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “President Putin called up and he said, I’d love to help you with Iran. I said, do me a favour: I’ll handle Iran. Help me with Russia. We got to get that one settled. And I think something’s going to happen there.”
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