Five civilians died and 12 were injured in Ukraine’s shelling of the town of Rakitnoye in Russia’s Belgorod region, the governor of the region in the country’s southwest said Sunday.
Among the injured are three children, Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region that borders Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in the war, which Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on its smaller neighbor in February 2022.
Saturday in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy touted a newly developed Ukrainian “drone missile” that he said would take the war back to Russia.
As Ukraine marked 33 years of post-Soviet independence, Zelenskyy said the new weapon, Palianytsia, was faster and more powerful than the domestically made drones that Kyiv has so far used to fight back against Russia, striking its oil refineries and military airfields.
“Our enemy will … know what the Ukrainian way for retaliation is. Worthy, symmetrical, long ranged,” he said.
Zelenskyy said the new class of Ukrainian weapon had been used for a successful strike on a target in Russia, but did not say where.
Russia, which has attacked Ukraine with many thousands of missiles and drones since it invaded in February 2022, has decried Ukraine’s drone attacks as terrorism. Moscow’s troops are advancing in Ukraine’s east and occupy 18% of the country.
Zelenskyy has been pressing Kyiv’s allies to allow him to use Western weapons deeper in Russian territory, to strike, for example, airbases used by Russian warplanes that pound Ukraine with missiles and glide bombs.
“I want to stress once more that our new weapon decisions, including Palianytsia, is our realistic way to act while some of our partners are unfortunately delaying decisions,” Zelenskyy told a news conference.
Ukrainians say the word “Palianytsia,” a type of Ukrainian bread, is too difficult to pronounce for Russians and it has been used – sometimes humorously – during the war as a way to tell Ukrainians and Russians apart.
“It will be very difficult for Russia, difficult to even pronounce what exactly has hit it,” Zelenskyy said of the drone missile.
In a decree, Zelenskyy promoted his top commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, to the rank of general, a tacit gesture of praise after Ukraine’s lightning cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region launched on August 6.
Slammed by Russia as an escalation and major provocation, Ukraine’s incursion has captured more than 90 settlements in the Kursk region according to Kyiv, the biggest invasion of Russia since World War II.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Poland’s and Lithuania’s leaders, Zelenskyy told reporters the operation had in part been a preventive move to stop Russian plans to capture the northern city of Sumy.
Apart from capturing prisoners of war and creating a “buffer zone,” Zelenskyy said the operation had other objectives that he could not disclose publicly.
Polish president Andrzej Duda confirmed that Polish PT-91 Twardy tanks given to Kyiv by Warsaw were taking part in the fighting in Kursk region.
“We are touched to see how the PT-91 Twardy tanks, given by Poland [to Ukraine] more than one year ago, are defending today Ukraine on the battlefields, fighting in the Kursk region,” he said.
Russia has strongly condemned the use of western weapons for the incursion, which Putin has said will receive a “worthy response.”
Independence Day has surged in importance for Ukrainians during the invasion, which has spurred widespread patriotic sentiment.
To mark the date, Zelenskyy ratified the Rome Statute, paving the way for Ukraine to join the International Criminal Court, one of many steps needed to join the European Union, accession to which Kyiv sees as a priority.
He also signed legislation banning the activities of religious groups linked to Russia, creating a legal instrument for the government to ban a branch of the Orthodox Church seen as linked to Russia.
Ukraine and Russia also said they had each secured the release of 115 prisoners of war in an exchange. The Russian Defense Ministry said its freed servicemen had been captured during Ukraine’s attack in the Kursk region.
