Russian strike kills six, wounds nine in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia

KYIV (AFP) — A Russian strike on an infrastructure facility in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia near the front line has killed six people and wounded nine more, the regional governor said Tuesday.

The industrial city, which had an estimated pre-war population of more than 700,000 people, lies around 35 kilometers from the nearest Russian positions.

“Six people were killed and nine were wounded. A fire broke out at the site of the strike,” the governor, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on social media.

Fedorov has said in an earlier post on social media that Russian forces had struck an infrastructure facility in the city, without elaborating.

Zaporizhzhia has come under increasing Russian aerial bombardments in recent weeks and analysts of the Russian invasion have speculated the Kremlin could launch an offensive towards the city this winter.

The Kremlin claimed to have annexed the territory in late 2022 despite not having full military control over the region.

American-Russian sentenced

Meanwhile, a Moscow court on Tuesday upheld a 12-and-a-half year prison sentence for an American-Russian man, Robert Woodland, convicted earlier this year on drug charges.

Russia has arrested several United States and joint US-Russian citizens in recent years amid escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington.

At an appeals hearing at the Moscow City Court on Tuesday, judge Irina Khorlina said she ruled to leave the original sentence “unchanged,” an Agence France-Presse journalist reported from the courtroom.

Woodland, 32, took part in the hearing via video link from the detention center where he is being held.

His lawyer Stanislav Kshevitsky had asked the court to cut the sentence, saying he had pleaded partially guilty at trial.

Arrested in January 2024 trying to hide 47 grams of mephedrone, he was convicted in July for the attempted sale of drugs on a “large scale.”

Prosecutors said he had collected the drugs from a forest on the outskirts of Moscow, transported them to his apartment and had repacked them for sale.

His lawyer rejected that account.