Kyiv and Moscow gave differing accounts of a Ukrainian strike on Russia’s Bryansk border region, with the local governor saying six civilians were killed and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reporting a hit on a missile-component plant.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities said a total of at least six people were killed in Russian attacks on March 10, including four fatally injured in an air strike on the Donetsk region city of Slovyansk, where they said another 16 were injured.
The attacks came as US-brokered negotiations to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, now in its fifth year since the full-scale invasion, have been stalled amid the US-Israeli campaign against Iran.
In an audio message, Zelenskyy told reporters that a US-Ukraine-Russia meeting could be held next week, possibly in Switzerland or Turkey, where some previous rounds of talks have taken place.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff told CNBC on March 10 that he though “the trilateral will be shifted till sometime next week, and…we’re going to remain positive on that.”
Several rounds of talks have made little visible progress on key issues including territory, with Russia insisting on being handed the part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region that it has been unable to seize in years of heavy fighting.
The veracity of the accounts of the strike on Bryansk could not immediately be verified.
Russian regional Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post that six civilians were killed and 37 injured. Zelenskyy did not mention casualties in public comments on the attack.
“Our soldiers struck one of the key Russian military factories in Bryansk. This factory produced electronics and components for Russian missiles,” he said in a daily address, calling the strike “a completely justified response to the aggressor.”
Ukrainian authorities said that, in addition to the casualties on Slovyansk, one person was killed in the Sumy region and one in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where a separate attack injured nine people, including a child.
Amid constant fighting along the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine, Russia has unleashed daily attacks on cities, towns, and infrastructure across the country, often hitting homes and apartment buildings and killing or injuring civilians.
