NATO members Romania and Latvia accuse Russia of violating airspace with military drones

Five people were killed in Russian shelling of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on September 7, regional authorities said.

Three men aged between 24 and 69 were killed in the town of Kostiantynivka, Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram. Four people were injured, he said.

Two men in their 50s were reportedly killed in an artillery attack near the town of Toretsk, about 20 kilometers southeast of Kostiantynivka.

Public broadcaster Suspilne quoted Anastasia Medvedeva, a spokeswoman for the Donetsk Prosecutor General's Office, as saying that a fourth person was injured in the attack on Kostiantynivka – a 57-year-old woman who suffered shrapnel injuries and a head injury.

Medvedeva said the two people killed in Toretsk were men aged 52 and 53.

The city of Khariv was also shot at The region's Attorney General's Office said a collapse occurred late on September 7. The premises of a private company and nine vehicles were damaged, and a 61-year-old security guard was injured.

In the village of Mala Danylivka in the Kharkiv region, a residential building caught fire and ten private houses were damaged. Four people – three women and one man – were injured.

Earlier, on September 7, a major fire at a weapons depot prompted local authorities to evacuate about 600 people in the southwestern Russian region of Voronezh.

Governor Alexander Gusev said on Telegram that the fire in the Ostrogoz district of the region was caused by Debris from a droneGusev said residents of several surrounding settlements had been evacuated to safety and no injuries had been reported.

Videos have been posted on social media sites showing a major fire and in which explosions can be clearly heard.

Although the Russian Defense Ministry reported that Ukrainian drones had been shot down over the southwestern regions of Belgorod and Kursk, it made no mention of any drone attacks in the Voronezh region.

Gusev announced the evacuation of about 600 residents of the Ostrogoz district of Voronezh region in late August after claiming that drone strikes had sparked fires and explosive detonations that lasted nearly two days.

In Ukraine, the Air Force reported on September 7 that air defenses had been beefed up across the country to ward off a massive drone attack by Russia overnight. The Air Force said 67 long-range drones had been shot down.

On the evening of September 6, it was reported that one person was killed in rocket attacks in the southeastern city of Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region and 64 people were injured in the region.

In addition, Russian forces continued to push toward the strategically important town of Pokrovsk in Ukraine's Donetsk region. RFE/RL's Ukrainian service captured footage from near the front line there, showing the burning village of Novohrodivka.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on September 7 that its forces had captured the village of Kalynove, just 25 kilometers southeast of Pokrovsk, a key supply and logistics center for Ukrainian front-line troops.

Russia has been advancing on Pokrovsk for months, leading to the evacuation of the city. The goal is to take over the entire Donbass region. Russia has bombarded Ukraine across the country with missile and drone attacks. On September 3, it hit a military facility in the central Russian city of Poltava, killing at least 55 people and injuring over 300.

The memorial service for the victims took place on September 7 in a solemn ceremony.

A major Russian attack on September 4, just one day after the Poltova attack, killed seven people in the western Syrian city of Lviv.

Ukraine has now occupied more than 1,300 square kilometers and claims to have killed or wounded about 6,000 Russian soldiers in a surprise incursion into the western Kursk region last month.

Ukraine's top military commander, recently promoted General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said this week he considered the Kursk assault a success because it reduced the threat of Russian attacks. Syrskiy also acknowledged that the situation around Pokrovsk was difficult, but that Ukrainian forces had managed to repel the Russian offensive there.

On September 6, at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed to allied partners to give Ukraine the freedom to advance deeper into Russian territory with donated weapons.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said after the meeting that no single military weapon would be decisive in Ukraine's ability to fend off a large-scale invasion by Russia. Nor would the use of donated US weapons for long-range strikes against Russia be able to turn the tide of war in Ukraine's favor.

Austin said Russia has moved its glide bombs to positions beyond the range of the U.S. Army's tactical missile systems (ATACMS) and that Ukraine itself has significant capabilities to attack targets at long distances.

With reporting from AP