Russia and Ukraine report casualties as they continue to trade attacks

Two people were killed and three others injured in a Russian attack on the Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine, said regional military administration head, Oleksandr Hanzha.

Four districts were hit more than 20 times with drones, artillery and aerial bombs, he added on Telegram.

In the Volgograd region of Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and injured eight, regional governor, Andrei ⁠⁠Bocharov, said on Telegram on Friday.

In Russia’s southern region of Rostov, a drone attack injured a woman in the town of Gukovo, regional governor Yuri Slyusar ⁠⁠said on Telegram.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian deep and mid-range strikes attacked Russian infrastructure, including three logistics centres in Sarapul, Kazan and Volgograd.

Ukrainian forces also targeted a maritime terminal in Russia’s Krasnodar region and an oil refinery in the Volgograd region, he said

“We continue to carry out our deep and mid-range strikes against Russian infrastructure facilities that prop up Russia’s aggression,” Zelenskyy said on X on Friday.

“Our strikes under the long-range sanctions plan are always about justified responses aimed at depriving the Russian war machine of its resources.”

“We are protecting our people and will continue to act as necessary to achieve peace,” he continued.

It is far from the first time Ukraine has targeted Russian oil refineries, with the objective of causing serious fuel shortages across the country. They have already compelled Moscow, a major hydrocarbon producer, to begin buying fuel abroad.

Ukraine has also disrupted Russian supply routes north of the Sea of Azov, causing acute fuel shortages and blackouts in the occupied Crimean peninsula.

Ukraine recently stepped up attacks on facilities belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, as it keeps up strikes on energy facilities that have triggered a supply crisis ⁠⁠across most of Russia.

Wildberries said after being hit on Thursday that it had paid a second tranche of financial support to nearly 100,000 sellers whose goods were damaged.

Russian forces struck a vessel carrying ⁠⁠military cargo ⁠⁠near the Ukrainian port of Odesa, the Russian Defence Ministry said ‌‌on Friday.

It added that ⁠⁠forces had pushed Ukrainian ‌‌forces out of the settlement of Stinki in the Donetsk ⁠⁠region and ⁠⁠out of Virivka in Ukraine’s ⁠⁠Kharkiv region entirely.

The Russian Union of Grain Exporters and Producers said the consequences of the war will affect many countries in the near future.

Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, and Ukraine, ⁠⁠also a major agricultural ⁠⁠exporter, have long been attacking each other’s agricultural export facilities and ⁠⁠shipping in the Black Sea ⁠⁠area.