Engineer supply troops of the Ukraine Army’s 24th Mechanized Brigade search for unexploded munitions Monday as they clear the route to the heavily fought-over town of Chasiv Yar, just east of Bakhmut, in the eastern Donetsk region. Photo courtesy 24th Mechanized Brigade/EPA-EFE
Jan. 13 (UPI) — At least one person was killed and 17 injured in Ukraine overnight after Russia used drones, artillery and rocket launchers to attack provinces countrywide from Sumy in the northeast to Khmelnytskyi in the southwest, authorities said.
A 70-year-old man was killed in shelling in Kupiansk, 70 miles southeast of Kharkiv, on Sunday evening, said provincial governor Oleh Syniehubov.
Syniehubov said in a social media post that artillery, rocket launcher and drone strikes caused damage in nearby Kindrashivka and Senkove, and Bogodukhiv district, Valkivska, northwest of Kharkiv — but no casualties.
He said the attacks came as authorities scrambled to evacuate civilians amid repeated assaults by Russian troops against Ukrainian defensive lines in Vovchansk and Kozacha Lopan, close to the border with Russia’s Bolgorod province, and Petropavlivka and Pishchane, outside Kupiansk.
In neighboring Sumy province, the regional military administration reported that three civilians were injured in a drone strike and a bus was damaged in Myropilska, near the border with Russia’s Kursk region, and a fourth civilian was injured after artillery fire set a residential building ablaze in Seredyna-Buda which sits astride the border with Russia’s Bryansk province.
A major blaze was sparked at a children’s health and wellness center in Sumy after it was hit by debris from a downed attack drone, the State Emergency Service in the province said in a news release.
The incidents were among 68 attacks targeting 13 different settlements across the province over the past day.
Kherson Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in a post on his Telegram account that 10 people were injured in strikes on key infrastructure and high-rise apartment buildings in the province’s capital, Kherson, and 35 other settlements.
A man and a woman were hospitalized with blast injuries in Zaporizhzhia after their house was struck during a raid by attack drones on the city Sunday night.
In Pokrovsk in Donetsk, Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on social media that a civilian was injured in an attack that damaged two private houses and a high-rise building.
More than 60 other houses, 12 high-rise buildings, seven administrative buildings and a warehouse were damaged as settlements elsewhere across the country’s most heavily populated province came under bombardment, according to Filashkin.
“In total, the Russians shelled settlements in Donetsk region 16 times in the past day with 129 people evacuated from the front line, including eight children,” wrote Filashkin.
The Ukraine Air Force said Russian forces flew 110 attack drones against half of Ukraine’s 24 provinces overnight but that air defenses were able to down 78 of them and claimed “electronic warfare countermeasures” jammed or disabled another 31.