Russian attacks on Kyiv petrol stations kill two, Ukrainian strikes kill three in Russia

With fighting on the front line largely stalled more than 4-1/2 years into the war in Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine increasingly have struck logistics and other economic targets in recent weeks to try to damage the other's war effort.

Russia has for two weeks been carrying out almost constant attacks with faster jet-powered drones that have killed a number of Kyiv residents and disrupted daily life in Ukraine's capital. The attacks were paused while U.S. peace negotiators Steve ⁠Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Kyiv at the weekend, but then resumed.

"Russia's escalation with jet-powered 'shaheds' is gradually becoming increasingly terrorist in nature," Zelenskiy said on X.Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war, triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. ATTACKS ON PETROL STATIONSThe two dead in Kyiv were at one of the two petrol stations that was attacked, officials said, one by a double-tap strike.

Friday's strikes followed what appeared to be the first attack on a Kyiv petrol station a day earlier. In recent months, Russia hit some 300 petrol stations, mainly in or near Ukraine's frontline regions. "There is no military objective behind such strikes.

This is terror of the civilian population," said Bohdan Kukura, CEO of Ukrainian oil company Ukrnafta. A further 12 people, including a 12-year-old boy, were injured in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. An attack on a Kyiv residential block injured eight people overnight.

Zelenskiy said Russia had hit a building used by Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar (KYIV.O), opens new tab in Kyiv, and there were strikes in eight other Ukrainian regions. Kyivstar's network continued to operate, the company said.

A woman was killed in the Kyiv region surrounding the capital, the ⁠regional governor said. The governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, Oleksandr Hanzha, said one person was killed and 19 injured in attacks across his region.

All but one of the injured were in the city of Dnipro. A Russian assault on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed one person. A drone attack killed one person in the city of Kharkiv, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

In Russia's Belgorod region, a frequent target of Ukrainian forces, one person died in a Ukrainian drone strike, local officials said. And the Moscow-installed head of Russian-controlled parts of eastern Donetsk region said two local gas company employees were killed in a drone ⁠strike.

ESCALATING STRIKESUkraine has attacked Russia's largest online retailers and oil refineries, often deep inside the country, as well as energy and fuel logistics in regions of its own territory occupied by Russian forces. Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces had hit an enterprise and an oil industry facility in the Saratov and Volgograd regions.

He also reported strikes on unnamed targets in other regions and the Black Sea. Dmitry Milyayev, the governor of Russia's ⁠Tula region, said two people were killed and three injured in Ukrainian drone attacks overnight.

A 37-year-old man had been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike in the Kursk region, its governor said. Russian e-commerce company Ozon said a drone had caused a fire at its logistics hub in the central city of Saratov.

More than two dozen warehouses owned by Ozon and fellow online retailer Wildberries have ⁠been hit in recent attacks which Ukraine casts as part of a campaign against economic infrastructure underpinning Russia's war. Ukraine's military said it hit an oil refinery in Saratov.

Two people were injured in a missile attack that hit two residential buildings and damaged an industrial facility in Volgograd, south of Saratov on the Volga River, local authorities said, without identifying the industrial facility.