Ukraine, Russia report fresh missile attacks and explosions, 2 dead

Ukraine and Russia both reported fresh missile and drone attacks during the night, alongside a series of explosions, on Friday, leaving two civilians dead and scores injured.

Russia fired 17 missiles and 31 kamikaze drones at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, adding it shot down ten cruise missiles and 23 of the Iranian Shahed drones, plus two reconnaissance drones.

Air alerts sounded nationwide throughout the night and the wave of attacks, which also targeted Kiev, lasted until 5 am (0200 GMT).

The Ukrainian authorities reported that there had been strikes in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine.

In Dnipro, the military administration reported explosions and that a hospital had been hit, killing two and injuring 23 people, including two children.

"Russian terrorists once again confirm their status of fighters against everything human and honest," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram. Images shared online showed a destroyed and burning building.

Also in Dnipro, two businesses, a petrol station and a house were damaged and one person working at the petrol station was injured in the massive attack involving missiles and drones, the administration said.

In Kiev, missile fire triggered air defences and the head of the Kiev military administration, Serhiy Popko, said debris from a missile damaged the roof of a shopping and entertainment centre. Elsewhere, a house was hit. Cars in a car park were also damaged, he said. There were no casualties, Popko said.

Ukraine is making remarkable technological improvements to its defence capabilities, Zelensky said on Friday evening, particularly with the continued delivery of more advanced Western weapons.

"We are making faster progress in modernizing defence than was foreseeable six months ago," Zelensky said in a video speech.

According to him, new modern combat aircraft will soon become a key part of Ukrainian air defence.

Ukraine has been publicly lobbying for months to acquire the fighters, which would represent a significant upgrade over the country's current fleet of ageing Soviet-era aircraft.

U.S. President Joe Biden recently said that the U.S. would allow Ukrainian pilots to train on the jets and that the U.S. would not block the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine, although no country has yet stepped forward to actually supply the jets to Kiev.

Meanwhile, Russia also reported attacks on its soil that it claimed were carried out by Ukrainians. There was an explosion in the city of Krasnodar after a suspected drone attack, according to the report.

The local authorities said an office building and a residential building were hit. In the Belgorod region, there were also reports of new shelling of the border town of Graivoron.

Heavily armed fighters with military equipment were said to have entered from the Ukrainian side on Monday. More than 70 attackers were "destroyed," the Russian Defence Ministry said.

Kiev's Western backers, meanwhile, have largely stressed that weapons supplied to Ukraine are intended to liberate Ukraine and are not supposed to be used in attacks on Russian soil.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday during a visit to Estonia that "it is clear that the weapons we supplied will only be used on Ukrainian territory."

Scholz referred to Biden's recent similar statement in the New York Times in which Biden said the U.S. is "not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders."

Meanwhile, views differed on the transfer of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus. The step does not mean there is a greater danger of escalation in the Kremlin's war on Ukraine, say observers at the U.S. Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

It is still extremely unlikely that Putin would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or elsewhere, according to their analysis.

Their comments come after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said the planned transfer of weapons to his country had already begun, following a meeting Putin.

The threat level is no higher as Russia is already able to reach potential targets with its nuclear weapons, the analysts say.

The tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which have a shorter range than the strategic nuclear missiles, are to be stationed on the border with Poland, according to Moscow.

Stationing the weapons in Belarus primarily serves to further expand Russia's military infrastructure and command structures in the neighbouring country, further subordinating the security structures in Belarus, the analysis says.

But Berlin strongly condemned the transfer of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus.

"The transfer of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, as claimed by Lukashenko, is another transparent attempt at nuclear intimidation by Russia," deputy government spokesman Wolfgang Büchner said. "We firmly reject this."

As fighting rages, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev suggested the partition of Ukraine as a possible outcome of the war, with the east going to Russia and zones in the west incorporated into several European Union member countries.

Inhabitants of the central regions could then vote for accession to Russia.

Medvedev, a staunch Putin ally who currently serves as deputy head of the Security Council, sketched out three probable scenarios on his Telegram channel, with partition being the one he favoured.

This outcome would "terminate the conflict with adequate guarantees that it would not be restarted over the longer term," Medvedev wrote. If, by contrast, an independent rump Ukraine acceded to the EU or NATO, conflict was likely to erupt again, "with the danger that it could mutate into a full-blow third world war," he said.