At least six people killed in Ukrainian missile attack on Russia’s Belgorod 

At least six people have been killed and four others, including a 14-year-old, have been wounded in a Ukrainian missile strike on western Russia’s Belgorod region.

The Ukrainian attack on Monday hit the village of Koloskovo in the Valuysky district, acting Belgorod Governor Alexander Shuvaev said on the state-backed MAX platform. Shuvaev said a structure was “burned” and a vehicle damaged in the attack.

Koloskovo is about 15km (10 miles) from Ukraine’s northeastern border.

At the same time, Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks across Ukraine, killing at least four people and wounding 19.

At least two people were killed and four injured in a Russian attack on the southeastern region of Zaporizhia.

At least two people were killed and one person was wounded in Russian shelling on Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, emergency services said.

At least five people were injured in a Russian strike on central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region while four were injured after two Russian guided-bomb attacks hit Izyum in the northeastern region of Kharkiv.

Five people were injured in Russian attacks on the southern region of Kherson.

In the Odesa region, also in southern Ukraine, a Russian attack targeted port infrastructure in the Izmail district.

The fires caused by the overnight attack, which damaged a Togo-flagged civilian vessel, have been extinguished, Ukrainian authorities wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Izmail, close to the Romanian border, is home to Ukraine’s largest port on the Danube River.

The attacks came a day after Russia and Ukraine carried out missile and drone attacks deep inside each other’s territory that killed 19 people in both countries.

With front-line fighting at a near standstill and US-backed talks aimed at ending the conflict frozen, the warring countries have significantly stepped up missile attacks, pushing the civilian death toll to its highest levels since the war’s first months in 2022.

Russia has carried out near-daily missile and drone attacks across Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

It has recently intensified attacks using hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles, exploiting Ukraine’s shortages of air defence weapons after the United States-Israel war against Iran increased pressure on global supplies.

Ukraine has increasingly targeted warehouses belonging to Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries, saying the company sells components for Russian drones and outfits Russian soldiers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said those attacks along with attacks on oil refineries are aimed at undermining Russia’s war economy.

In July alone, 437 civilians were killed in Ukraine, the highest monthly toll since May 2022, according to a United Nations tally.

Russian authorities reported 79 civilians killed in Ukrainian attacks in July, up from the previous month.