Russian attacks on eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv kill 4, wound more than two dozen

KYIV Ukraine AP Russian attacks targeting the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed at least four people and wounded more than two dozen others on Saturday bureaucrats revealed as hopes for peace dimmed further The first wave on Ukraine s second-largest city was a large Russian drone-and-missile attack in the early hours It killed at least three people and wounded others according to local executives In the afternoon Russia dropped aerial bombs on the city center killing at least one person and wounding five more Kharkiv s mayor mentioned The warring sides also accused each other of trying to sabotage a planned prisoner exchange nearly a week after Kyiv embarrassed the Kremlin with a surprising drone attack on military airfields deep inside Russia Saturday s barrage the latest in near daily widescale attacks on Ukraine included aerial glide bombs that have become part of a fierce Russian onslaught in the all-out war which began on Feb Kharkiv residents describe fiery trap As firefighters and exigency workers bustled around attack sites in Kharkiv residents described the strikes that damaged their homes and nearly took their lives on Saturday morning Alina Belous revealed that she had tried to extinguish flames with buckets of water to rescue a young girl trapped inside a burning building who had called out for help We were trying to put it out ourselves with our buckets together with our neighbors Then the rescuers arrived and started helping us put out the fire but there was smoke and they worried that we couldn t stay there When the ceiling started falling off they took us out she explained Local resident Vadym Ihnachenko declared that he thought at first that it was a neighboring building going up in flames But when we saw sparks coming from the top we realized it was our building he reported More pressure on Moscow is required Ukraine s air force stated that Russia struck with missiles and drones overnight and Ukrainian air defenses shot down drones and seven missiles Several other areas in Ukraine were also hit including the regions of Donetsk Dnipropetrovsk Odesa and the city of Ternopil Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha declared in an X post To put an end to Russia s killing and destruction more pressure on Moscow is required as are more procedures to strengthen Ukraine he noted The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday disclosed that its forces carried out a nighttime strike on Ukrainian military targets including ammunition depots drone assembly workshops and weaponry repair stations There was no comment from Moscow on the reports of casualties in Kharkiv Kharkiv s mayor Ihor Terekhov noted that the strikes also damaged apartment buildings and private homes Terekhov stated that it was the the greater part powerful attack on the city since the start of Russia s full-scale invasion Children among the wounded Kharkiv s regional governor Oleh Syniehubov revealed the morning s attacks saw two districts in the city struck with three missiles five aerial glide bombs and drones Among the wounded were two children a baby boy and a -year-old girl he added Six people are held to be trapped under the rubble of an industrial facility in Kharkiv s Kyiv district The Kharkiv prosecutor s office disclosed in a declaration on Telegram Contact with those trapped was lost and rescue attempts have been ongoing since early afternoon it noted without naming the facility On Saturday afternoon Russian aerial bombs struck Kharkiv again killing at least one person and wounding five others the mayor reported The morning strikes also wounded two people in the Dnipropetrovsk province further south according to local Gov Serhii Lysak Meanwhile Russia s defense ministry mentioned that its forces shot down Ukrainian drones overnight over the country s south and west including near the capital Drone debris wounded two civilians in the suburbs of Moscow local Gov Andrei Vorobyov stated No breakthrough on a peace deal On Friday Russia struck six Ukrainian territories killing at least six people and wounding about Among the dead were three urgency responders in Kyiv one person in Lutsk and two people in Chernihiv A U S -led diplomatic push for a settlement has brought two rounds of direct peace talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine though the negotiations delivered no critical breakthroughs But both sides remain far apart on their terms for an end to the fighting Prisoner swap called into question Later on Saturday Russia and Ukraine each accused the other of endangering plans to swap bodies of soldiers killed in action agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that otherwise made no progress towards ending the war Vladimir Medinsky a Putin aide who led the Russian delegation stated that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap In a Telegram post Medinsky explained that refrigerated trucks carrying more than bodies of Ukrainian troops from Russia had already reached the agreed exchange site at the frontier when the news came In response Ukraine declared Russia was playing dirty games and manipulating facts According to the main Ukrainian authority dealing with such swaps no date had been set for repatriating the bodies In a declaration Saturday the agency also accused Russia of submitting lists of prisoners of war for repatriation that didn t correspond to agreements reached on Monday It wasn t right away workable to reconcile the conflicting maintains New video of airfield drone attack Ukraine s Protection System on Saturday issued a video revealed to show its audacious attack on Russian air fields Sunday in which Kyiv reported that Russian military aircraft was destroyed The video shows the flight path of one explosive-laden first person view or FPV drone from takeoff from the roof of a modular building to the Belaya air field where it appears to strike a Russian strategic bomber Other aircraft are seen engulfed in flames apparently from previous hits in Ukraine s Operation Spiderweb A previous round of negotiations in Istanbul the first time Russian and Ukrainian negotiators sat at the same table since the early weeks of the full-scale invasion led to prisoners on both sides being exchanged