This handout photograph taken and released by Ukrainian Presidential Press-service late on August 1, 2025 shows the President Volodymyr Zelensky laying flowers in front of a residential building in Kyiv partially destroyed following a Russian missile strike morning on July 31, 2025, amid Russian invasion in Ukraine. Kyiv observed a day of mourning after the deadliest attack in the Ukrainian capital this year, which ripped open a nine-storey residential building, wounding 159 people and claiming the lives of five children. (Photo by Handout / UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE / HANDOUT " - HANDOUT - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS
Ukrainian drone strikes killed three people and wounded two others overnight in western Russia, regional governors said on Saturday.
One woman was killed and two other people were wounded in an attack on an enterprise in Penza, the region’s governor, Oleg Melnichenko, wrote on Telegram.
An elderly man was killed inside a house that caught fire due to falling drone debris in the Samara region, Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev posted on Telegram.
In the Rostov region, a guard at an industrial facility was killed after a drone attack and a fire in one of the site’s buildings, acting Rostov governor Yuri Sliusar said.
“The military repelled a massive air attack during the night,” destroying drones over seven districts, Sliusar posted on Telegram.
Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence systems had destroyed 112 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory — 34 over the Rostov region — in a nearly nine-hour period, from Friday night to Saturday morning.
In Ukraine’s central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, overnight Russian drone attacks left three people wounded, governor Sergiy Lysak wrote on Telegram.
Russian forces have claimed advances in Dnipropetrovsk, recently announcing the capture of two villages there, part of Moscow’s accelerated capture of territory in July, according to AFP’s analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War.
Kyiv denies any Russian presence in the Dnipropetrovsk area.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire in the more than three-year conflict, said Friday that he wanted peace but that his demands for ending Moscow’s military offensive were “unchanged”.
Those demands include that Ukraine abandon territory and end ambitions to join NATO.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said only Putin could end the war and renewed his call for a meeting between the two leaders.
“The United States has proposed this. Ukraine has supported it. What is needed is Russia’s readiness,” he wrote on X.
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