Ukraine and Russia exchange drone strikes hours after failed ceasefire talks
Ukraine's regional officials announced on Thursday that the bodies of a woman, her husband and their adult son had been discovered under the rubble of a house in the border region of Kharkiv.
They said the family killed in the village of Pidlyman had fled the settlement of Boguslavka which was captured by Russian forces when they invaded in early 2022, but was later retaken by Ukrainian forces.
A later drone barrage on Kharkiv city wounded 33 people, including a 10-year-old girl and a month-old infant, the governor said.
Meanwhile in Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike left two women dead and several others wounded in Sochi in Russia's south, regional authorities said.
The Russian defence ministry said its air defence systems had downed 39 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles mainly over southern regions of the country.
This latest exchange followed a brief third round of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, which failed to reach a ceasefire.
A separate Russian drone and missile barrage wounded seven people including a child in the central Ukrainian region of Cherkasy, emergency services said.
In the southern port city of Odesa, a Russian drone attack wounded four people and badly damaged the Pryvoz market.
Ukraine's prime minister said some of the buildings targeted, including the famous market, were UNESCO protected.
"Russia continues its terror and obstructs diplomacy," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post.
"[This] is why it deserves full-scale sanctions responses, as well as our strikes on their logistics, their military bases, and their military production facilities."
He said Russia had launched 103 drones — mainly the Iranian-designed Shahed type of unmanned aerial vehicle — and four missiles.
In a separate development in Ukraine's domestic politics, Mr Zelenskyy announced on Thursday he had approved a draft bill strengthening Ukraine's law enforcement system and the independence of its anti-corruption agencies.
It comes after new laws to limit the independence of two key anti-corruption bodies passed this week in Ukraine, sparking large street protests and attracting rare rebukes from European allies.
On Thursday, Mr Zelenskyy bowed to the mounting pressure.
He said on X that the draft bill, which would be submitted to parliament later in the day, was well-balanced and "upholds the independence of anti-corruption agencies".
The European Union earlier said a commitment to fight corruption is an important precondition both for EU financial aid as well as for potential EU membership.
"We welcome the fact that the Ukrainian government is taking action," an EU spokesperson said.
"We work with them to make sure that our concerns ... are indeed taken into account."
ABC/AFP/Reuters
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