KYIV: Russia renewed its strikes on Ukraine on Friday, killing three people including an eight-year-old girl, Ukrainian officials said.

The strikes come a day after Ukraine launched its biggest-ever drone attack on Moscow, killing a different eight-year-old girl and sparking an inferno at a major oil refinery, according to Russian officials.

The Kremlin said Friday it would “continue” striking Ukraine following that attack.

Both sides have escalated attacks on each other in recent weeks, as US-led talks on ending the more than four-year conflict remain effectively frozen.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly rejected an offer from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky for direct talks, vowing instead to achieve Russia’s war aims on the battlefield.

Between late Thursday and early Friday, Russia launched 90 drones at Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian air force.

“An eight-year-old girl was killed. Another person was wounded. These are the consequences of this morning’s enemy attack on Pavlograd,” Oleksandr Ganzha, the governor of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region said. Separate Russian attacks on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region killed one person, while strikes on the eastern city of Kramatorsk killed one other, according to authorities.

Russian drone attacks late Thursday killed one person and wounded five others on civilian ships in the Black Sea, Ukraine said.

The strikes come as Moscow deals with the aftermath of Thursday’s Ukrainian drone barrage, the largest on the capital since Russia invaded in 2022.

Those strikes set an oil refinery, an apartment building and a shopping centre ablaze.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2026