One person died and many were injured following the Russian attack on Zaporizhzhya

Missiles fired overnight by a drone in the frontline town of Zaporizhzhya in southeastern Ukraine have left at least one person dead and 25 injured, local authorities said Thursday morning.

“Among them is a two-month-old boy,” Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram. He published pictures of damaged residential buildings.

He also reported that the electricity supply point and the heat and power plant were hit, adding that 20,000 people do not have electricity and 17,000 people do not have heat.

The authorities said that among the injured were emergency workers and maintenance workers of the electricity supplier, who were trying to repair the damage during the first attack when they were caught in the second wave.

Fedorov reported that the night attack lasted a total of six hours.

Zaporizhzhya is located in Ukrainian-controlled territory only 30 kilometers from the front. The Russian army kept encircling the city again and again.

The Kremlin, justifying its nearly three-year war by protecting Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine, seized the partially controlled regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya near Donetsk and Luhansk in the fall of 2022.

For peace talks, Moscow wants the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from all of Zaporizhzhya.

Ukrainian soldiers have been arrested and allegedly killed in Donetsk

Authorities in Kiev said Thursday they are investigating the alleged killing of six Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russian forces.

The public prosecutor’s office in Kiev said the killing of prisoners of war was believed to have taken place when Russian forces occupied Ukrainian territory in the eastern Donetsk region.

As in such cases before, the allegations are based on a video that has gone viral on social media. Russian soldiers are said to have filmed the act themselves.

The execution of prisoners of war is a serious violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime, prosecutors noted in a statement.

It was not said when they were killed.

With the continuous advance of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine, more and more Ukrainian soldiers are being killed, according to Kiev, even though they have surrendered to the Russians.

At least 109 prisoners of war were executed this way in 2024, said Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights commissioner of the Ukrainian parliament, shortly before the end of last year.

The forces in Donetsk are in danger of being encircled

Ukrainian troops are in danger of being surrounded by Russian troops on the front line in the Donbass region, a military official said on Thursday.

The situation near the town of Velyka Novosilka is difficult, a military spokesman said on Ukrainian television on Thursday.

“There is a danger of encircling the operation,” he said, explaining that the Ukrainian military is using artillery fire to prevent this.

Before the war, Velyka Novosilka was a rural town of about 5,300 people. It marks the most southwestern point in Donetsk.

The city center is still protected by the Ukrainians.

Meanwhile authorities in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region have ordered the forced evacuation of 16 villages. The children and their families will leave these areas because the Russian side has intensified the bombing.

In its Thursday afternoon situation report, the General Staff of Ukraine counted 82 Russian attacks on all fronts in the east.

More than half of all attacks were against the city of Pokrovsk and its surroundings, which has been burning for months, the military wrote on Facebook.