Strikes in Ukraine, Russia and annexed Crimea kill at least seven

A Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Pavlograd killed three people on Thursday, while Kyiv's counter-strikes on Russia and Moscow-annexed Crimea killed four others, including a three-year-old child, officials said.

Oleksandr Ganzha, the governor of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, said three people were killed in Pavlograd. He later said 19 people were wounded, including a two-year-old girl, and that all the wounded were in hospital.

Pavlograd is in east-central Ukraine and had a pre-war population of about 100,000. It has come under Russian attack during the conflict.

In Russia, officials said a three-year-old boy was killed on the outskirts of Voronezh when a Ukrainian drone hit his house and set it on fire. Regional governor Alexander Gusev said the child's parents had various wounds. Voronezh is about 500 kilometres south of Moscow and has frequently been targeted by Ukrainian drones.

Kremlin-installed officials said Ukrainian night-time attacks on Crimea, which has been under Russian occupation since 2014, killed two people. Local authorities in Russia's Belgorod region said another man was killed by a Ukrainian drone there. Belgorod borders Ukraine and is regularly hit.

Civilian deaths in the more than four-year war have risen this summer. The United Nations said Wednesday that civilian casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war rose by 37 percent in the first half of this year, and said last month was the deadliest since the first year of Russia's 2022 invasion.

Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting remain stalled. The Kremlin has refused to drop its demands to seize the whole of eastern Ukraine, while US-led talks on resolving the conflict have not advanced.