Russian Strikes Kill Four in Ukraine as the Reshuffle Backlash Grows
Russian attacks overnight killed at least four people and wounded around twenty across Ukraine, with two dead in Odesa, two in Zaporizhzhia and injuries in Kharkiv. The strikes came as Ukraine fights under an interim defence chief following President Zelensky’s contested government reshuffle, whose sacking of the popular defence minister Mykhaylo Fedorov has drawn protests in several cities. Ukraine said it had destroyed a Russian Tu-95 bomber at the Engels airbase, some 800 kilometres inside Russia, in its continuing campaign against the aircraft and refineries that sustain Moscow’s war.
The overnight deaths are a reminder that beneath the political drama in Kyiv the war grinds on at its lethal daily pace, and that Zelensky’s decision to overhaul his government mid-conflict has unsettled the country at a delicate moment. Removing the minister who built the drone force that has kept Ukraine competitive, and doing so to public protest, is a gamble on fresh momentum against the risk of disruption. The claimed destruction of a Tu-95 deep inside Russia, if confirmed, would be a striking success for that same long-range campaign, which aims to blunt the bombers and drain the fuel that power Russia’s onslaught. Casualty and equipment claims on both sides are single-sourced and should be treated with care. Europe’s new missile-defence coalition and Britain’s promised jets are meant to steady the balance, but they take time. Watch whether the protests grow, whether the new defence team holds, and whether Ukraine’s strikes keep reaching into Russia.