Russian bomb attack kills 4 in northern Ukraine as hostilities intensify

A Russian glide bomb struck the centre of the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy, killing at least four people, including a child and injuring 27 others as tensions escalate between the countries.

Regional Governor Oleh Hryhorov said, "At the epicentre of the strike - a high-rise apartment building, a shop and a street. There were a great many people. Children."

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared images showing the aftermath of the attack, including medics treating the injured, a blood-stained stretch of pavement with two abandoned sandals, and a building reduced to rubble.

Hryhorov said that among the dead are a five-year-old boy and his mother, while the 27 people are getting treated in nearby hospitals.

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Russia claims Ukrainian territory

Russia on Friday said it had captured the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka, a key post on the road leading to the last major cities in the Donbas region under Kyiv's control.

The battle for this city, which had around 78,000 inhabitants before the war, has been taking place since late 2025 and now constitutes the main Russian effort on a front more than 1,000 kilometres long.

"Kostyantynivka has been completely taken. The city is now entirely under our control," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, including those from AFP, announcing that President Vladimir Putin had spoken with the military about it.

Hostilities intensify

At the same time, nearly 15 people were killed in fresh Russian and Ukrainian attacks on Friday, according to officials from both countries, as hostilities intensified a day after Moscow carried out one of its deadliest air assaults on Kyiv since the start of the war.

Authorities installed by Russia in the occupied part of Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region said a Ukrainian strike on a local market killed five civilians. Kremlin-appointed governor Yevgeny Balitsky accused Kyiv of targeting civilians, saying the victims had been shopping when the attack occurred.

Balitsky also reported three additional deaths in separate strikes elsewhere in the occupied region.

In Russia, regional authorities said one person was killed in the Belgorod region and another in neighbouring Bryansk, both of which border Ukraine and have frequently come under cross-border attacks.

Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched two missiles and 105 drones overnight in the latest wave of aerial attacks.

Russia’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, said its air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 155 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory and the annexed Crimea peninsula during the same period.

The latest violence came less than 24 hours after Russia launched a massive missile and drone barrage on Kyiv that killed at least 30 people, making it one of the deadliest attacks on the Ukrainian capital since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.