Russia continues drone onslaught on Ukraine, prepares for new ground offensive in Kharkiv
Russia blasted Ukraine with a bevy of drone attacks Saturday, killing one person and injuring several others, amid increasing signs that Moscow is gearing up for renewed offensives.
A 27-year-old man was killed in a drone strike on the southern city of Kherson, the governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Facebook. Two other men, ages 30 and 49, were also seriously injured in the attack.
At least four people in the capital of Kyiv were injured in overnight attacks that sparked fires and damaged residential and commercial buildings, and another was wounded in the northeast city of Kharkiv, according to officials. Damage was reported across the country.
Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted 56 of 88 Russian drones.
The barrage comes as Ukrainian Ground Forces warned Saturday that Russian troops are preparing to launch a renewed offensive on Kharkiv, a northeast city, the Kyiv Independent reported.
Meanwhile, Moscow has continued to reject a temporary cease-fire deal first proposed by the US last month, leaving Trump administration officials reportedly at odds over how to break the deadlock.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to Russia, has backed a strategy that would give Russia control of four eastern Ukrainian regions it occupied when its deadly invasion began in 2022, which Kyiv has rejected.
The special envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, previously pushed back on that plan.
He appeared to support granting Russia the territories and carving up the country like “Berlin after WWII” in an interview with The Times of London Friday — before walking the comments back.
Kellogg proposed British and French “reassurance” troops in the west and Ukrainian forces and a demilitarized zone in the middle.
“You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after WWII, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone, and a British zone, a US zone,” he said.
Kellogg later said the article misrepresented what he was saying.
“I was speaking of a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” he said in a post on X. “In discussions of partitioning, I was referencing areas or zones of responsibility for an allied force (without US troops).”
“I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine,” he insisted.
