Ukraine downs 19 of 31 Russian drones

Ukraine said Saturday it downed around two-thirds of the 31 attack drones launched overnight, mostly on frontline areas by Moscow.

"Nineteen enemy Shahed-136/131 attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were destroyed. The Russian occupants sent most of the attack UAVs to the frontline areas," the air force said, adding Russia also used several missiles.

Two strong explosions were heard in central Kyiv on Saturday morning by Agence France-Presse journalists, who also saw trails in the sky, shortly before air raid sirens sounded.

"According to preliminary information, the air defenses worked against ballistic weapons," Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram.

There were no reports of injured people so far, he said.

Avdiivka besieged

Russian forces are fighting to surround the war-battered frontline town of Avdiivka and capture a strategically-located factory nearby, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said Friday.

Moscow's forces in the southern region of Kherson meanwhile carried out fatal shelling of a village retaken by Ukrainian forces one year ago.

Avdiivka, an industrial hub in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, was briefly captured by pro-Russian forces in 2014.

Oleksandr Shtupun, a Ukrainian military spokesperson, told state media that Ukrainian forces were repelling Russian assaults on Avdiivka's large chemical plant and that the facility was under their control.

He added that Russian forces were routinely striking Avdiivka with artillery and military jets, saying a bombardment late Thursday had killed two civilians.

Further south in the region of Kherson, the regional governor said five people were wounded and one killed in Russian shelling on the village of Novoraysk.

Rare deal

A Ukrainian orphan from Mariupol, who was taken to Russia after it captured the port city last year, will be returned to Ukraine in a rare deal between Kyiv and Moscow, they announced Friday.

The Kremlin has been accused of illegally transferring thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, and the International Criminal Court is seeking President Vladimir Putin's arrest over the alleged deportations.

Bogdan Yermokhin, 17, was taken by Russian forces from Mariupol to Russia last spring and — like an unknown number of other Ukrainian children — placed in a Russian foster family.

Moscow said earlier this year that he had tried to escape back to Ukraine but was stopped near the Belarus border.

"Bogdan Yermokhin will soon be in Ukraine!" Ukraine's rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets wrote on social media Friday.

Ukrainian forces were repelling Russian assaults on Avdiivka's large chemical plant.

Moscow confirmed Yermokhin will be returned to Ukraine.

"The Russian and Ukrainian sides worked on and agreed on a decision on a meeting between Bogdan and his sister in a third country on his birthday," children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova Belova — also wanted by the ICC — said Friday on social media, without specifying the location.

Ukraine gave no timeline for when Yermokhin would be returned to Ukraine.

Thousands of Ukrainian children are believed to have been taken to Russia during its invasion.

Last month, Russia said it would return four Ukrainian children to their relatives after mediation by Qatar.

WITH AFP