Russian attacks on southern Ukraine's Kherson region have killed five civilians, Ukrainian officials say, while Russian-installed officials in the eastern town of Horlivka said one person was killed as a result of Kyiv's shelling.
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Russian forces abandoned the city of Kherson, the administrative centre of the Kherson region on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, and the western bank of the river more than a year ago but have since subjected many areas there to constant shelling from their positions on the eastern bank.
The deaths in Kherson occurred in an incessant Russian shelling of the city and the region in the preceding 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said.
Regional police said three people died in the shelling of an apartment building and a private home in Kherson city.
A woman died in a drone attack in a small town south of Kherson and a second woman was killed when a town further north came under heavy fire.
Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, head of the press office of Kherson's regional military administration, told the Ukrainian public broadcaster that gas and water supplies were partially cut off due to the attacks, which also hit a medical facility.
"The windows were broken, the building was damaged," Tolokonnikov said.
Some 600km northeast of Kherson in the town of Horlivka, in areas of Ukraine's Donetsk region under Russian control, Ukraine's shelling destroyed a shopping centre and several other buildings, a Russian-installed official said.
The attacks killed one woman and wounded six civilians, the Russian-installed mayor of Horlivka, Ivan Prikhodko, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Reuters could not independently verify the Russian and Ukrainian reports.
While Moscow and Kyiv deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched on Ukraine in February 2022, both sides have carried out numerous strikes on each other's infrastructure.
Russian and Ukrainian military officials have both reported downing enemy aircraft in different areas of the 1000km-long front of their 22-month-old war.
The commander of Ukraine's air force, Mykola Oleshchuk, said Ukrainian anti-aircraft units had struck a Russian Su-34 fighter bomber on Sunday near the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine.
Oleshchuk, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the aircraft had not returned to its base but gave no further details.
Russia's defence ministry said earlier that its air defence systems had shot down four Ukrainian military aircraft in the past 24 hours, just two days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine had downed three Russian aircraft.
In its daily dispatch, the Russian Defence Ministry said its air defence shot down three Su-27 fighter aircraft and one Su-24 tactical bomber in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions of southeastern Ukraine.
The dispatch provided no further details.
On Friday, Zelenskiy said the country's forces shot down three Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber aircraft on the southern front, hailing it as a success in the 22-month-old conflict.
Air Force commander Oleshchuk also said the planes had been downed.
Reuters was not immediately able to corroborate the battlefield reports from either side.
Zelenskiy addressed his compatriots on Sunday with a Christmas message of encouragement in the face of Russia's ongoing invasion.
"In the end, darkness will lose," Zelenskiy said in the video message.
"Evil will be defeated."
with DPA
Australian Associated Press
