Russia Bombards Ukrainian Border Region With 70 Shells: Governor

The governor of Ukraine's Sumy region says Russian forces launched 70 missiles at four communities in the latest in a series of reported attacks on the border area.

Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, governor of the Sumy administrative district, reported the attacks in a Telegram post Friday that he said resulted in no casualties but damaged residential and commercial buildings. Sumy, in the country's northeast, has continued to see its towns and cities struck by Russian missiles even as the fighting in the war has shifted to Ukraine's eastern and southern regions.

Zhyvytskyi said in the post that the attacks began when Russian forces fired nine mortar shells on Khotyn, a small town north of the city of Sumy. Russians also fired another nine mortar shells on Myropol that Zhyvytskyi said exploded without inflicting damage.

In the afternoon, the Russian military opened fire on two unspecified villages on the border, using self-propelled artillery that ignited 15 explosions, he said.

"Miraculously, there was no destruction."

Russian forces fired on the Bilopolsk community for nearly an hour and launched 28 missiles, causing damage to three residential buildings and four commercial structures, according to Zhyvytskyi.

"There were direct hits into the residence," he said. "Fortunately, there were no casualties."

The Znob-Novgorod community was hit with another four mortars launched by Russian forces who also fired on it with grenades and firearms, according to the governor.

Russia began launching waves of Iranian Shahed-136 drones on cities across Ukraine last month. Serhiy Borzov, governor of the Vinnytsia region in central Ukraine, also said in a Telegram post Friday that an air alarm had been sounded in response to another drone attack.

Ukraine's military successfully repelled a sneak attack by Russia on the Sumy region earlier in the war. Russia's military has continued to fire missiles on the region—sometimes as many as 200 in a day—according to officials.

But a U.S. think tank concluded that Sumy poses little threat to Russia.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported in research published late last month that Roman Starovoit, governor of the Kursk Russian region that borders Sumy, announced that the construction of two reinforced defense lines on the border with Ukraine had been completed and a third was in the works.

The ISW said in its report that the defense lines are "likely an act of security theater designed to target a domestic Russian audience."

"Creating such defensive lines does not serve a practical military purpose and, if confirmed, would be a waste of Russian resources," the ISW said in its report. "Ukrainian forces in Sumy Oblast do not pose and never have posed a military threat to Kursk Oblast."

Despite Sumy again being struck with Russian artillery, Zhyvytskyi noted in a followup post that the heaviest fighting in the war at the moment is in Bakhmut and Soledar, in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region where a counteroffensive is underway.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.