Russia launched several waves of drone attacks on Kyiv early Sunday for the second night in row, stepping up its assaults on the Ukrainian capital after several weeks of pause, the city’s military administration said.

“The enemy’s UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were launched in many groups and attacked Kyiv in waves, from different directions, at the same time constantly changing the vectors of movement along the route,” Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app. 

Ukraine’s air force said its air defense systems destroyed 15 of 20 Russia-launched Shahed kamikaze drones over Kyiv, Poltava and Cherkasy regions.

In Kherson five people including a 3-year-old girl were injured by Russian artillery shelling Sunday morning, Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said.

“All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance,” Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian troops abandoned Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River in the region late last year, but now regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank.

Ukraine’s military said on social media Friday that it had gained “a foothold on several bridgeheads” on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, near the southern city of Kherson. 

Ukrainian troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnipro to stop them from shelling civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday.  

Russia conceded that Ukrainian forces had claimed back some territory on the opposing bank.  

Teen returns to Ukraine

A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving Russia earlier this year, returned to Ukraine Sunday.

Bohdan Yermokhin, an orphan from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol that was captured by Moscow’s troops during the first year of the war, had been taken to Russia and placed in a foster family in the Moscow region.

Yermokhin, who turned 18 Sunday, appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine.

“This is a very pleasant gift, to put it in the right way. The emotions are overwhelming, all good, with the notion that Ukraine needs me,” he said.

Zelenskyy welcomed Yermokhin’s return in his nightly video address.

“Many attempts were made to help him. I am happy everything worked out,” he said, expressing thanks to Ukrainian officials, international organizations, and particularly the U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and authorities in Qatar for help in mediation.

Twenty-thousand children have been illegally transferred to Russia since the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, with some being put up for adoption. Kyiv says this is a war crime, an allegation denied by Russia, which says it was protecting children in a war zone. 

Ukraine – EU

About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks were stuck on the Polish side of the border Sunday morning due to a blockade lasting more than 10-days by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.

Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“For over 10 days, Ukrainian drivers have been blocked at the Polish border. Thousands of people are forced to live in difficult conditions with limited food, water and fuel,” Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said on X, formerly Twitter.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
…