Russia Claims Control of 4 Settlements in Eastern Ukraine

Russia’s defence ministry announced on Thursday that its troops have successfully taken control of four settlements in eastern Ukraine. The settlements include Chernihivka in Donetsk region, as well as Mala Slobidka and Mohrytsia in Sumy region and Yurchenkove in Kharkiv region.

The announcement comes after Russia launched a massive overnight attack on Ukraine, hitting the country with dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the attack resulted in the deaths of eight people and injured dozens more. Zelensky stated that the Ukrainian air force was the main focus of the attack, with the capital and the western region of Lviv on Ukraine’s border with Poland being targeted.

The Ukrainian air force reported that it shot down 55 missiles and 265 drones, but only one of nine ballistic missiles. However, 11 missiles and 17 drones hit targets at 20 locations. The US-made Patriot air defence system, which is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of downing Russia’s ballistic missiles, is in short supply globally.

The attack also affected neighbouring Poland, with authorities finding a crater and debris in a field following reports of an explosion. Poland scrambled fighter jets to secure its airspace during the attack. A Russian cruise missile is believed to have crossed into Poland.

In Ukraine, a day of mourning was announced for Friday in a village in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where six people, including three children, were killed. Thousands of people sheltered in metro stations in Kyiv, where air alerts lasted more than five hours overnight. Emergency workers were also pulling people out of a damaged residential apartment building in Lviv, where a Russian missile hit but did not explode.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed that its forces struck military facilities across Ukraine, from Kyiv to Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk, as well as three cargo ships. The war in Ukraine has now entered its fifth year, with both sides escalating their long-range air strikes and movement on the 1,200-km front line slowing due to the predominance of aerial drones.