Russian strikes kill 2 in Ukraine as Kyiv struggles to counter escalating Russian attacks

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian strikes killed two people and wounded five more across Ukraine, officials said Friday, as Ukraine struggles to counter escalating Russian bombardments that have killed more than 50 people over the past three days.

One man was killed and five people were wounded in Russian strikes on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region Friday morning, said Mykhailo Semikin, the head of the regional military administration. He said that the attacks hit residential areas and that a child was among the wounded.

Another man was killed in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, Svitlana Onyshchuk, head of the regional military administration, reported.

Russia also attacked warehouse facilities in the Bucha district of the Kyiv region on Friday, wounding three people, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said on Telegram. It said that rescuers were searching for a woman who may still be under the rubble.

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than 4 1/2 years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

Elsewhere, a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s eastern Belgorod region killed two people Friday, the area’s regional emergency headquarters said. Regional governor Alexander Shuvayev said that 12 people had been wounded in Ukrainian strikes.

Zelenskyy appeals for NATO support

Russian attacks have killed dozens of civilians across Ukraine over the past three days using a mix of ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones. On Thursday, a Russian guided bomb exploded next to public buses filled with passengers in eastern Ukraine, killing 30 people.

A day earlier, a Russian missile strike killed 22 people, including five children, in the northern Ukrainian town of Pryluky.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Moscow will likely escalate daily attacks as winter approaches, putting pressure on Ukraine as it prepares for winter and hitting the infrastructure keeping its war-battered economy afloat. Recent Russian targets have included energy systems, key industries, railways, post offices, shopping centers, telecom networks, gas stations and grain exports.

Zelenskyy appealed on Thursday for additional defense support from NATO countries.

“It is important that support in words takes concrete form in new packages for Ukraine’s defense,” he wrote in an online post. “Supplies of anti-ballistic capabilities, ammunition for our combat aircraft and investments in interceptors — all of this is directly helping save lives every day.”

Without ammunition for its U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, Ukraine can’t stop Russian ballistic weapons. It is racing to develop a new generation of interceptors fast enough to catch Moscow’s high-flying jet-propelled drones.

Ukraine targets Russian data centers

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone strike damaged a data center belonging to Russian technology giant Yandex, the company confirmed. It said that several modules at the center in Russia’s Kaluga region had been “completely disabled.”

It is the second time in two days that the company has been targeted, with an earlier drone attack Thursday taking a data center in Russia’s western Ryazan region offline.

The governor of the Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, said Friday that nine people had been wounded by drone attacks on the region.

Meanwhile, Tver regional governor Vitaly Korolyov said a Ukrainian drone sparked a fire at a factory in Redkino. No casualties were reported.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that its air defenses downed 505 Ukrainian drones from late Thursday until early Friday.

___

Davies reported from Manchester, England.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine