Russian strikes wounded more than 30 people in Ukraine overnight, officials said on Friday, a day after Kyiv and Washington signed a landmark minerals deal.
Ukraine hopes the deal will pave the way for Washington to provide security pledges to the embattled country, which has been fighting a Russian invasion for more than three years.
“Twenty-nine people were wounded as a result of a nocturnal attack by the enemy” on the industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, regional governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram, adding that a 13-year-old boy was among the victims of the drone strike.
“The Russians have struck the city's civilian infrastructure. Residential buildings, a university, and an infrastructure facility have been damaged,” Fedorov wrote.
Two men were also wounded in a Russian drone attack in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, with fires breaking out at two locations, Governor Sergiy Lysak said on Telegram.
Ukraine's national railway company said its locomotive repair plant in Zaporizhzhia was “subjected to a massive attack” overnight, which sparked a fire that raged for hours. No injuries were reported.
Russia's Defense Ministry said its air defenses destroyed 121 Ukrainian drones overnight, the majority over Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014.
The latest barrage came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the minerals deal with the U.S. offered “equal” benefits for both sides, even though the accord offered no concrete security guarantees for Kyiv.
The Ukrainian leader called on his country's allies to ramp up “pressure on Russia to force it to be quiet and to negotiate.”
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