Russia, Ukraine strikes kill 10 as Zelensky travels to Turkey for talks

Firefighters work at a market hit by a Russian drone strike in Nikopol, Ukraine, on Saturday.

Photo: Handout via Reuters Russia and Ukraine traded deadly strikes overnight and on Saturday morning, killing 10 people and wounding several dozen more, officials on both sides said on Saturday.

The attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Istanbul for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

He will also meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians. “We are working to strengthen our partnership to ensure the real protection of lives, advance stability, and guarantee security in Europe and the Middle East.

Joint efforts always yield the best results,” Zelensky said in a post on the messaging app Telegram after arriving in Istanbul.

Russia fired 286 drones at Ukraine overnight, 260 of which were downed, the Ukrainian Air Force said in an online statement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Istanbul on Saturday.

Photo: Turkish presidency via dpa Five people – three women and two men – were killed in the city of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and 19 others were wounded, the head of the regional military administration Oleksandr Hanzha said.

The attack damaged market stalls and a shop.

In the city of Sumy, not far from the border with Russia, a strike wounded 11 people, the National Police said.

Residential areas were hit, and houses, cars and utility networks were damaged in the attack.

In the capital, Kyiv, a drone strike caused a fire on the first floor of a three-storey office and warehouse building, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.

No casualties were reported.

In the partially occupied Donetsk region, a Russian drone strike hit a civilian car on the Kostyantynivka – Druzhkivka road on Saturday morning, killing one woman and wounding another, according to the head of the Kostyantynivka City Military Administration, Serhiy Horbunov.

The Russian Defence Ministry claimed on Saturday that its forces fired “long-range air- and ground-based precision weapons, as well as strike drones” at unspecified “military-industrial and energy facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces”.

Meanwhile, the Russian-installed head of the occupied Luhansk region, Leonid Pasechnik, said Ukrainian forces hit railroad infrastructure in the region and private houses, killing a family of three – a couple and their ei

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