Russia and Ukraine trade aerial attacks as Zelensky moves against corruption
An eight-year-old boy was killed in western Ukraine following Russian missile strikes.
Russia fired missiles at western Ukraine that killed an eight-year-old boy, local officials have said.
Meanwhile while drones that Russian officials blamed on the Ukrainian military targeted Moscow for a third day in a row but reportedly did not cause any significant damage.
The missile that killed the boy struck a house in western Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the Polish border, according to the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general.
Debris from intercepted missiles fell on residential areas of the city, including the premises of a children’s hospital, without causing casualties, local authorities said.
Falling wreckage of missiles and drones has in the past killed people on the ground and damaged buildings in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, a drone fell in western Moscow after Russian air defence systems stopped it, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Nobody was hurt, he said.
The drone plunged onto the Karamyshevskaya Embankment, officials said, which is about 5 kilometres (3 miles) from a Moscow business district that was hit twice in previous drone incidents.
Also on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the firing of all the heads of regional military draft boards, part of his crackdown on corruption since the outbreak of Russia’s war in Ukraine more than 17 months ago.
Mr Zelensky announced the dismissal of the heads of conscription centres across Ukrainian regions.
The step was taken after Ukrainian security services presented details of 112 criminal cases against draft board officials suspected of taking bribes and engaging in corrupt practices.
Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post that the jobs should instead go to war veterans, including those with injuries.
Mr Zelensky has previously fired senior officials suspected of corruption.
The long-simmering issue of corruption in Ukraine’s draft system burst into the open last June when a media investigation was published about Odesa’s regional draft commissar Ievhen Borysov.
The investigation reported on millions of dollars’ worth of real estate and luxury vehicles allegedly owned by Mr Borysov’s family members in Spain.
Mr Borysov denied any wrongdoing. He says that he had nothing to do with what his family purchased.
After the report, Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation and its Security Service detained scores of draft board staff suspected of bribery and corruption.
