Russian forces have struck the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro while Moscow accused Kyiv of firing two missiles at southern Russia.
The Russian defence ministry said it shot down a Ukrainian missile in the city of Taganrog, about 40 km (about 24 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, and local officials reported 20 people were injured, identifying the centre as an art museum.
Debris fell on the city, the ministry added, alleging the missile was part of a “terror attack” by Ukraine.
Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s secretary of the national security and defence council, blamed Russian air defence systems for the explosion.
Russia’s defence ministry said it downed a second Ukrainian missile near the city of Azov, which like Taganrog is in the Rostov region, and debris fell in an unpopulated location.
Earlier in the day, a Ukrainian drone was shot down outside Moscow, the defence ministry said, in the third drone strike or attempt on the capital region this month. The ministry reported no injuries or damage in the latest incident, and it didn’t give an exact location where the drone fell.
Since the war began, Russia has blamed Ukraine for drone, bomb and missile attacks on its territory far from the battlefield’s frontline. Ukrainian officials rarely confirm being behind the attacks.
In Dnipro, an apparent Russian missile attack wounded at least three people in a modern 12-storey apartment building, officials said. The night-time attack also hit the security service of Ukraine’s building in the city, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, reported. “Russian missile terror again,” he wrote on social media.
Video showed the apartment building’s upper floors in ruins. Russia has often struck apartment buildings during the conflict, while denying it intentionally targets civilians.
Meanwhile, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, said his troops were pushing forward in parts of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia and meeting stiff resistance as the war drags into its 18th month.
“The enemy fiercely clings to every centimetre, conducting intense artillery and mortar fire,” he said in a statement.
Recent fighting has taken place at multiple places along the more than 1,000 km (more than 600-mile) front, where Ukraine deployed its recently acquired western weapons to push out the Kremlin’s forces. However, it is attacking without vital air support and faces a deeply entrenched foe.