Ukraine reports three deaths in Donetsk from Russian artillery

At least three people have died in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka as a result of Russian artillery fire, the regional Ukrainian military administration reported on Saturday.

The dead were men aged between 24 and 69, it said. It repeated a call for residents to evacuate from the city, which lies just over 10 kilometres from the front line between Ukrainian and Russian troops in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.

The artillery strike in the morning had hit a residential block, an administration building, shops, cars and power cables, the authorities said.

Kostiantynivka is seen as strategically important and has come under repeated Russian attack.

The Russian Defence Ministry in Moscow reported that Russian forces had taken the village of Kalynove, without providing further information. There are several villages of this name in the region, and there was no immediate confirmation from the Ukrainian side.

Earlier, the authorities in the south-western Russian region of Voronezh declared an emergency after a Ukrainian drone attack and explosions in the Ostrogozhsk district.

Voronezh Governor Aleksandr Gusev reported on Telegram that several settlements in the Ostrogozhsk district had been evacuated following detonations caused by an object with explosive materials.

Gusev did not identify the object, but Ukrainian observers assumed that an ammunition dump had been hit.

Ukrainian media reported that the ammunition depot in the village of Soldatskoye in western Russia was hit. The Russian troops in Ukraine had been supplied from there, Ukrainian media reported citing the Ukrainian military intelligence service SBU.

According to Gusev, there were no casualties and the extent of the damage was initially not clear. Most of the residents had found accommodation with friends and relatives, he said.

Voronezh, which shares a border with Ukraine's Luhansk region, has come under repeated attack from Ukrainian drones targeting fuel depots and ammunition storage sites since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

Gusev also said a 54-kilometre stretch of motorway was closed for safety reasons, of the road linking Voronezh and the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, which Kiev has not controlled since 2014.

The governor said areas along the motorway were on fire and there were problems extinguishing the fire due to the ongoing explosions.

Separately, Ukrainian air defences reported downing 58 of 67 Russian drones, some of which entered Belarusian airspace.

The Belarus authorities have recently reported violations of their airspace and said that objects had been shot down.

The Ukrainian parliament in Kiev published photos showing parts of downed drones near the building. No damage had been caused, it said.