One person was killed and three more injured in an attack on two apartment blocks in the city of Donetsk, according to local officials

Ukraine shelled several apartment blocks in the Russian city of Donetsk, killing at least one person and injuring three, local officials have reported. The attack came just hours before the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, in Alaska.

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said on Telegram that a woman had been killed and three other civilians wounded in a long-range strike that damaged two residential buildings and a school.

Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large, earlier stated that rescue workers had retrieved one person from under the rubble in the wake of a “strike on a multi-story residential building” in Donetsk.

Russia’s RIA Novosti previously claimed that an 18-year-old woman had been trapped underneath the collapsed structure.

On Thursday, Russian officials reported a series of Ukrainian drone strikes on residential buildings in the border city of Belgorod and the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, which killed and wounded multiple civilians.

The strikes came just days after Russia’s Defense Ministry alleged that the Ukrainian leadership was preparing to stage a high-profile provocation intended to derail the summit between Trump and Putin. According to the statement, Kiev was hoping to frame Russian forces as responsible, while having Western journalists on hand to provide damaging media coverage.

Last month, Ukrainian forces also launched a major UAV raid on Moscow and surrounding areas, just hours after Vladimir Zelensky proposed a third round of talks with Russia in Istanbul.

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In early June, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian drones had targeted military airfields in five Russian regions, just a day before the two belligerents were to hold negotiations in Türkiye.

Moscow and Kiev resumed direct talks after a three-year hiatus in light of the latter’s decision to unilaterally walk away from the peace process in the spring of 2022.

Commenting on the escalating Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory in late May, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Kiev’s actions were “clearly at odds with the pursuit of the peace process.”

Around the same time, Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of staging “barbaric terrorist attacks” in an attempt to “thwart the direct Russia-Ukraine talks facilitated by the US administration.”

Rodion

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