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Russia and Ukraine struck each other with hundreds of drones on Sunday, throwing Russian air travel into disarray, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Ukrainian deals with western partners allowing Kyiv to scale up production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Six Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow, said its mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, while another two were reported outside Russia’s second largest city, St Petersburg. Rosaviatsiya, Russia’s civil aviation authority, reported temporary airport closures in the two cities and other regional centres and said dozens of flights had been delayed.
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In Ukraine on Sunday, Russian drones injured three civilians in Kyiv and at least two in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, located in the north-east, officials said. A Russian attack involving Shahed drones also targeted port infrastructure in Mykolaiv in central Ukraine, according to its governor, Vitaliy Kim. He reported warehouses and the port’s power grid were damaged but there were no casualties.
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Russia killed four civilians and injured a fifth with a glide bomb and a drone in the frontline town of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine, prosecutors said. The drone struck a car in which a married couple were travelling, killing the 39-year-old woman and 40-year-old man on the spot.
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Zelenskyy said Ukraine had struck deals with European allies and a leading US defence company to step up drone production, ensuring Kyiv receives “hundreds of thousands” more UAVs this year. Zelenskyy did not name the US business in his nightly video address to Ukrainians, but said Ukraine and Denmark had also agreed to co-produce drones and other weapons on Danish soil.
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Russia said on Sunday it had captured the villages of Piddubne in Donetsk and Sobolivka in Kharkiv. Ukraine did not immediately comment on Russia’s claims which were also not independently confirmed. Piddubne was home to about 500 people before the conflict and lies 7km (four miles) from the border of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region. Sobolivka lies 3km (two miles) west of the town of Kupiansk, outside areas Russia claims it is holding, according to battlefield maps by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
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Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is to begin a state visit to the UK on Tuesday, addressing parliament and co-chairing a meeting on Ukraine. Macron and Starmer will host the 37th Franco-British summit in London on Thursday, where they are set to discuss opportunities to strengthen defence ties in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The summit will touch upon the deployment of “a reassurance force” to Ukraine after a ceasefire and how to “increase pressure” on Russia to accept an unconditional ceasefire, the Élysée Palace said. The last state visit by a French president to the UK was made by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008.
