Russia and Ukraine trade deadly strikes as Zelensky travels to Istanbul for talks with Erdogan

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine traded deadly strikes overnight into Saturday morning, killing 10 people and wounding several dozen more, officials on both sides said.

The attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled 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 Saturday.

Three women and two men were killed in the city of Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk province, and 19 other people were wounded, according to the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Hanzha. The attack damaged market stalls and a shop.

In the city of Sumy, near the Russian border, a strike wounded 11 people, Ukraine’s National Police said. Residential areas were hit, and houses, cars and utility networks were damaged.

In the capital, Kyiv, a drone strike caused a fire on the first floor of a three-story office and warehouse building, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine 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 person, according to the head of the Kostyantynivka city Military Administration, Serhiy Horbunov.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that its forces had 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 as well as houses, killing a family of three — a couple and their 8-year-old child.

The Security Service of Ukraine, also known as the SBU, said it used drone strikes to target production at a metallurgical plant in the Russian-occupied city of Alchevsk in the Luhansk region, most of which is controlled by the Russian forces.

The SBU said on its Facebook page that drone strikes damaged blast furnaces, key production workshops, distillation columns, gas pipelines and electrical substations that power the plant, which supplies Russia’s state tank and railroad car plant, Uralvagonzavod.

There was no immediate comment from Russian officials.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Russian military overnight shot down 85 Ukrainian drones over nine Russian regions, the annexed Crimea region of Ukraine and the Black Sea.

In Russia’s Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, one person was killed and four sustained injuries, according to the region’s governor, Yuri Slyusar. The attack sparked a fire at a warehouse facility of an unspecified logistics company and another fire on a dry-cargo vessel flying a foreign flag several miles from the shore, Slyusar said.

In Tolyatti, a city in Russia’s Samara region, one person was wounded, Gov. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. The roof of a residential building was damaged and windows were shattered in several apartments, he said.

Yurchuk writes for the Associated Press.