Russia, Ukraine trade deadly drone attacks

Russia and Ukraine traded another wave of drone strikes overnight, both sides said yesterday, in attacks that killed and wounded people on either side of the front line.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected calls for a ceasefire and escalated his army's strikes, defying US President Donald Trump's pledge of fresh weapons for Ukraine and harsh sanctions if a peace deal is not struck soon.

Meanwhile, Russia gave Ukraine the bodies of 1,000 soldiers yesterday as part of an agreement reached at peace talks last month, Moscow's top negotiator said on social media.

Russia's defence ministry said its air defences shot down 122 drones overnight, most of them in border regions. In Russia's Belgorod border region, "a woman was killed when an explosive device was dropped from a drone onto a private house", Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram.

He said three civilians had been killed a day earlier. And in the Voronezh region, which also borders Ukraine, three teens were wounded when falling drone debris struck a building, regional governor Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram.

Russia's strikes on Ukraine killed one person in the central city of Dnipro, Governor Sergiy Lysak said.

Russia launched 64 drones, mostly targeting the central Dnipropetrovsk region, which includes Dnipro, according to Ukraine's air force. It said it had shot down or disabled 41 of them.

That was far down on recent nights, where hundreds of self-exploding attack drones have been fired at the country.