In the Kherson region, a Ukrainian assault on the small town of Sadove on Friday killed 22 and injured 15 people, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-appointed governor. Saldo claimed that Ukrainian forces initially struck the town with a French-made guided bomb, followed by a U.S.-supplied HIMARS missile. He accused Ukrainian forces of intentionally launching a repeat strike to increase casualties when residents rushed to assist the injured.

Officials declared Saturday a day of mourning in Luhansk, with public events cancelled on Sunday and Monday in Kherson.

Further east, in the Luhansk region, Russia-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik reported that two more bodies had been retrieved from the rubble after a Ukrainian missile attack on the regional capital on Friday, bringing the death toll to six. Pasechnik also mentioned that 60 people were wounded in the attack.

Meanwhile, drone attacks between Russia and Ukraine have continued. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that Ukraine launched a barrage of drones across Russian territory overnight Friday. Twenty-five drones were reportedly destroyed over Russia’s southern Kuban and Astrakhan regions, the western Tula region, and the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula.

On Saturday morning, Russian officials stated that air defenses for the first time shot down Ukrainian drones over the North Ossetia region in the North Caucasus, approximately 900 km (560 miles) east of the front line in Ukraine’s partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region. The Ministry of Defense confirmed the destruction of one drone, while regional Governor Sergei Menyailo reported three downed drones targeting a military airfield.

In Ukraine, air defenses overnight shot down nine out of 13 Russian drones over the central Poltava region, southeastern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and the Kharkiv region in the northeast, according to Ukraine’s air force. Dnipropetrovsk regional Governor Serhiy Lysak reported that the drone attack damaged commercial and residential buildings.

Additionally, a Ukrainian military spokesman announced on Saturday that Ukraine now controls more than half of the town of Vovchansk, a flashpoint for fighting since Russia launched a renewed offensive in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region last month. “Most of the city is under the control of the defense forces,” Nazar Voloshin, spokesman for the Khortytsia ground forces formation, stated on Ukrainian state TV. Independent confirmation of this claim was not immediately possible.

Russia’s offensive in the Kharkiv region appears to be part of a coordinated new strategy, which includes testing Ukrainian defenses in the Donetsk region further south, and launching incursions in the northern Sumy and Chernihiv regions. (ILKHA)