Latvia and Romania each reported incidents involving Russian drones during another barrage fired at Ukraine over the weekend, a sign of increasing aerial threats posed to countries in the region.
A Russian military drone crashed in eastern Latvia on Saturday, the country’s president, Edgars Rinkevics, said on Sunday in a statement on X.
The drone crossed into Latvian airspace from neighbouring Belarus before crashing in the Rezekne municipality, the Latvian defence ministry said on its website. Rezekne is about 55km west of the Russian border and about 700km north of Ukraine.
Latvia’s foreign ministry has summoned Russia’s charge d’affaires to discuss the incident, and said it plans to increase protection of its land borders, airspace and territorial waters.
Earlier on Sunday, Romania’s foreign ministry issued a statement urging Russia to abide by international law after a drone violated its air space the previous night.
Romania issued an alert message to citizens in the counties of Tulcea and Constanta near the border, and scrambled two F-16 fighter jets as a precaution. Its government also informed Nato allies and remains in close contact with them, it said.
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of overnight air attacks on their border regions.
Ukrainian officials said two people died and four were injured in the Sumy region, and Russia said three civilians were injured in Belgorod.
Two children were among those injured in Sumy, the military administration of the northeastern Ukrainian region said on Sunday on the Telegram messaging app. Several residential houses and cars were damaged, it said.
Across the border, in Russia's southwestern region of Belgorod, three civilians, including two children were injured in Ukraine's air attack, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the region, said on Telegram.
He said two residential buildings were destroyed and more than 15 buildings in total were damaged.
The Russian defence ministry said on Telegram that it destroyed two Ukraine-launched drones over Belgorod overnight.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Both Sumy and Belgorod regions have been subject to frequent attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians, saying the attacks are aimed at destroying each other's infrastructure critical to war efforts.
Thousands of civilians have died in the war, which Russia started with full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022. Millions of Ukrainians have also been displaced, while their cities and villages have become piles of rubble.
In the east, a Russian offensive toward the Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, which has become a focal point of the war in recent months, has stalled along one key section of the front for more than a week, even as advances continued elsewhere, soldiers fighting in the area said.
Battlefield maps based on open sources such as satellite images and videos posted online also showed the halt.
Still, the fighting in villages and fields east of the town, which is a logistical hub for Ukraine’s defence of the eastern Donbas region, remains fluid, and there was no indication that the large Russian force gathered in the area had abandoned its goal of advancing toward the town.
In Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy appointed on Sunday former arms production minister Oleksandr Kamyshin as an external adviser for strategic issues, a decree published on the presidential website said.
Mr Kamyshin, who was the minister for strategic industries and oversaw arms production, resigned last week as part of a Ukrainian government shake-up at a critical juncture in the war with Russia.
Mr Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed “new energy” and ordered the biggest government reshuffle since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Last week the Ukrainian parliament voted to appoint nine new ministers including the foreign minister and two deputy prime ministers. – Agencies