A 55-year-old man was killed by artillery fire in Ukraine\u2019s southeastern city of Nikopol
\n KYIV
\nRussian attacks on eastern and southern Ukraine killed two people and wounded 10 others, officials said Wednesday, as Kyiv called for Patriot air defense systems to battle a surge in missile strikes.
\nMoscow has escalated its aerial attacks on Ukraine in the past few weeks, targeting key infrastructure including power stations in retaliation for fatal bombardment of Russia\u2019s border regions.
\nA 55-year-old man was killed by artillery fire in Ukraine\u2019s southeastern city of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region head Sergiy Lysak said.
\nThe governor of Ukraine\u2019s southern Kherson region, which is partially occupied by Russia, said one woman had been killed in a drone attack on the village of Mykhailivka.
\nUkrainian forces retook swathes of the Black Sea territory in late 2022 but Russia has been shelling recaptured towns and villages since.
\n\u201cA 61-year-old local resident was fatally wounded in her own home,\u201d the official, Oleksandr Prokudin, wrote on social media.
\nThe governor of the neighboring Mykolaiv region said later that a Russian ballistic missile had struck the coastal territory, leaving six wounded, with one in a critical condition.
\nSeparately, the governor of the eastern Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegubov, said three men and one woman all over the age of 50 were injured in separate strikes on towns and villages in the region.
\nThe mayor of the region\u2019s capital, also called Kharkiv, said that a strike on a residential neighborhood had left \u201cdead and wounded,\u201d but did not give details about casualties.
\nThe Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 13 Iranian-designed attack drones at Ukraine overnight and that 10 were downed over the Kharkiv region, the neighboring Sumy region and near the capital Kyiv.
\nDuring an online briefing Wednesday, Ukraine\u2019s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for urgent deliveries of air defense systems to ward off an increase in ballistic missile strikes.
\n\u201cThe peculiarity of the current Russian attacks is the intensive use of ballistic missiles that can reach targets at extremely high speeds, leaving little time for people to take cover and causing significant destruction,\u201d Kuleba said.
\n\u201cPatriot and other similar systems are defensive by definition. They are designed to protect lives, not take them,\u201d he said.
\nUkraine has been forced onto the defensive in the past few months as it struggles with ammunition shortages and a hold up to a $60 billion aid package from Washington.
\nIt has also been forced to concede ground to Russia on the eastern front in recent months, warning earlier this week of \u201cdifficult\u201d battles around the eastern city of Chasiv Yar.
\nRussia meanwhile announced that its air defense systems had shot down 18 rockets near the border city of Belgorod, which has recently seen an uptick in fatal Ukrainian attacks. The governor of Russia\u2019s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said one person was wounded during the barrage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 55-year-old man was killed by artillery fire in Ukraine\u2019s southeastern city of Nikopol KYIV Russian attacks on eastern and southern Ukraine killed two people and wounded 10 others, officials said Wednesday, as Kyiv called for Patriot air defense systems to battle a surge in missile strikes. Moscow has escalated its aerial attacks on Ukraine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-396753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n