At least two people dead in Ukraine after Russian airstike in Sumy

Two people died and 12 others injured in a Russian drone attack on Ukraine's north-eastern city of Sumy on Friday morning, local authorities said.

Police reported that 12 apartment buildings, as well as private residences and cars, were damaged during the attack. Russian attacks in the region have intensified in the past weeks.

Video footage shared by the State Emergency Service showed rescuers pulling an injured person out of debris.

Ukraine’s Suspilne media, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh, said the Russians used Shaheds stuffed with shrapnel elements for the first time in the region. “These weapons are used to destroy people, not to destroy objects,” said Artiukh, according to Suspilne.

Russia on Thursday fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile in response to Kyiv's use of US and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an address on Thursday.

It struck a missile factory in Dnipro in central Ukraine. Putin warned that U.S. air defence systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which he said flies at 10 times the speed of sound and which he called Oreshnik — Russian for hazelnut tree.

The Pentagon confirmed that Russia's missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate-range missile based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.

Ukraine uses first US long-range missiles

Meanwhile, Ukraine fired several American-supplied long-range missiles into Russia, officials said Tuesday, marking the first time Kyiv used the weapons that way in 1,000 days of war.

The use of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, came as Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, opening the door to a potential nuclear response by Moscow to even a conventional attack by any nation supported by a nuclear power. That could include Ukrainian attacks backed by the US.

A Telegram channel affiliated with the Ukrainian military posted a video on Tuesday that shows US-supplied ATACMS missiles being fired from an undisclosed location in Ukraine. Euronews could not independently verify the date and location of when the video was filmed.

According to a US official, Ukraine fired about eight of the missiles, and just two were intercepted by Russia. The official said that the US was still assessing battle damage, but that the missiles struck an ammunition supply location in Karachev, a city of roughly 18,000 people in Russia's Bryansk region. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments.

The developments marked a worrying escalation in the conflict that has repeatedly ratcheted up international tensions. US officials recently expressed dismay at Russia’s deployment of North Korean troops to help it fight Ukraine, while Moscow seethed when Washington eased restrictions on the ATACMS in recent days.