Ukraine

KYIV, June 20 (Reuters) - Russia attacked military and infrastructure targets across Ukraine early on Tuesday, including in the capital Kyiv and the western city of Lviv, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine said it had shot down 32 of 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched from Russia's Bryansk region and the Azov Sea.

But a "critically important facility" was struck in Lviv, far from the front lines and around 70 km (43 miles) from the border with NATO member Poland, regional governor Maksym Kozytskiy said. He gave no other details of the facility.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian air defenses downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia early Tuesday, most of them in the Kyiv region, officials said, in a bombardment that exposed gaps in the country’s air protection after almost 16 months of war.

Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a nighttime drone attack lasting around three hours, officials said, but Ukrainian air defenses in the area shot down about two dozen of them.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Kremlin’s spokesman said Monday that U.N. aid workers who want to visit areas ravaged by the recent Kakhovka dam collapse in southern Ukraine can’t go there because fighting in the war makes it unsafe.

The United Nations rebuked Moscow on Sunday for allegedly denying aid workers access to Russian-occupied areas where residents are stranded amid “devastating destruction.”

June 18 (Reuters) - The death toll from flooding following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam has risen to 16 in Ukraine, Kyiv officials said, while Russian officials said 29 people have died in territories that Moscow controls.

The breaching of the Kakhovka Dam on June 6 unleashed floodwaters across a large swath of land in southern Ukraine and in Russia-occupied parts of Ukraine, destroying farmland and cutting off supplies to civilians.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine are suffering high numbers of military casualties as Ukraine fights to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas in the early stages of its counteroffensive, British officials said Sunday.

Russian losses are probably at their highest level since the peak of the battle for Bakhmut in March, U.K. military officials said in their regular assessment.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday met with a group of leaders of African countries who traveled to Russia on a self-styled “peace mission” the day after they went to Ukraine.

Seven African leaders — the presidents of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia, as well as Egypt’s prime minister and top envoys from the Republic of Congo and Uganda — visited Ukraine on Friday to try to help end the nearly 16-month-old war.

KYIV, June 16 (Reuters) - Advancing Ukrainian troops are facing "desperate resistance" from Russian forces around the eastern city of Bakhmut, and are inflicting big losses on Russian troops in the south, Ukrainian military chiefs said on Friday.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield situation. Russia has not officially acknowledged Ukrainian advances in the early stages of a counteroffensive, and said it had inflicted heavy losses on Kyiv's forces in the previous 24 hours.

KIEV, June 16 (Xinhua) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will closely monitor the water level at the cooling pond of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in southern Ukraine, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said Thursday.

"With the water that is here the plant can be kept safe for some time," Grossi said in a video message on Twitter after visiting the ZNPP.

SOUTHEASTERN UKRAINE, June 15 (Reuters) - Russia announced plans on Thursday to stage elections in occupied parts of Ukraine in just three months, Moscow's latest bid to signal it is in control even as a Ukrainian counteroffensive has pushed its forces back in some areas.

The Ukrainian assault is in its early stages, and military experts say the decisive battles still lie ahead. But corpses of Russian soldiers and burnt-out armoured vehicles lining the roadside in villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian troops attested to Kyiv's biggest advances since last year.

KRYVYI RIH, Ukraine, June 13 (Reuters) - Eleven civilians were killed in a Russian missile attack that struck an apartment building and warehouses in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday, local officials said.

Emergency services said four were killed in the apartment block and seven at the warehouses, where officials said a private company stored goods such as fizzy drinks. Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said none of the targets had military links.