Russia Hits Ukraine’s Kyiv Region With Drone Attack

The assault’s proximity to Kyiv underscores concerns about the threat posed by Iranian-made drones, which Russia has begun using more widely in recent weeks as it loses ground to Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s air-force command said it had shot down six Iranian-made drones over the south of the country on Thursday. While the drones’ slow speed and low altitude make them relatively easy to shoot down, Russia has exploited gaps in Ukraine’s patchwork of air defenses by deploying them in large numbers in conjunction with missiles.

Rescue workers recovered the bodies of two civilians from the rubble of a five-story apartment block destroyed by a Russian missile strike in the southern port city of Mykolaiv, according to Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych. Efforts were under way to find other civilians trapped beneath the wreckage.

Six missiles were fired on territory in the western Lviv region, four of which were shot down by soldiers, said Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the region’s military administration.

Earlier this week, Russia carried out one of its broadest and most intense barrages of the war, targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with more than 80 missiles and drones following weeks of setbacks on the battlefield. Ukraine’s air defenses shot down roughly half of the Russian missiles on Monday, but Kyiv has increased calls for more sophisticated defense weaponry.

In response, Ukraine’s partners pledged to bolster the country’s air defenses at a meeting of the 50-nation Ukraine Contact Group in Brussels on Wednesday.

“The more audacious and cruel Russian terror becomes, the more obvious it is to the world that helping Ukraine to protect the sky is one of the most important humanitarian tasks for Europe of our time,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address.

Work is continuing to restore energy infrastructure damaged in the series of Russian strikes earlier in the week, Mr. Zelensky said. In some regions, blackouts have been scheduled to ensure the stability of the grid.

Addressing the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine has about 10% of the air-defense systems it needs.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday said the U.S. and its allies planned to help Ukraine field an integrated air-defense system to protect against Russian cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft.

The system would be assembled from a mix of allied systems that can defend against low-, medium- and high-altitude threats, Gen. Milley said. He didn’t say when such a system might be in place.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on Wednesday pledged to deliver Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAM, in the coming weeks.

Defense ministers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 30 countries, plus aspiring members of the military alliance Finland and Sweden, gathered Thursday in Brussels for a semiannual meeting focused largely on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The meeting is set to cover nuclear-arms policy, among other subjects. The issue has regained relevance lately following nuclear saber rattling from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has made veiled threats to use atomic weapons.

Also Thursday, a residential high rise in the Russian city of Belgorod was damaged by Ukrainian fire, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said. There were no casualties, he said. An ammunition warehouse exploded in another town in the Belgorod region, Mr. Gladkov said later Thursday, blaming Ukraine. The region, which borders Ukraine, has been shelled previously and authorities evacuated the population of a village a few days ago.

The recent intensification of Russian missile-and-drone attacks in Ukraine followed weeks of setbacks for Moscow. Ukrainian forces have retaken thousands of square miles of territory in the northeast and made gains in the south toward the occupied city of Kherson, a regional capital, seizing the momentum in the eight-month war.

The U.K.’s Ministry of Defense said Russian forces appeared to be consolidating a new front line in the southern Kherson region after retreating by around 12 miles earlier this month. Ukrainian military officials confirmed that Ukrainian troops liberated five settlements in the Kherson region’s north, the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank that publishes daily reports on the war in Ukraine, said Wednesday.

The Kherson region’s Russian-installed governor on Thursday asked the Kremlin for help relocating residents who he said were afraid for their safety. In response, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said that the government decided to help Kherson residents evacuate, and promised free housing and other essentials.

Over the weekend, an explosion damaged the bridge linking Russia with the occupied Crimean Peninsula. The Kerch bridge has been a crucial artery for the supply of fuel, military equipment and food to Russian troops. Officials in Kyiv haven’t claimed responsibility for the blast, but celebrated the incident.

Russia’s domestic intelligence agency on Wednesday said it had detained five Russian citizens and three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia, on suspicion of involvement in preparing the explosion.

Separately, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said 20 more prisoners of war returned home to Ukraine. On Tuesday, Mr. Yermak said Russia had released 32 prisoners of war.

Mr. Putin held talks Thursday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has positioned himself as a potential peace broker in the war. The discussions on the sidelines of a summit in Kazakhstan marked Mr. Putin’s fourth meeting since July with Mr. Erdogan, who is one of the few world leaders to speak regularly with the Russian president.

Mr. Erdogan called on Mr. Putin to extend an agreement that partially lifted Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian grain exports. Mr. Putin has threatened to abandon the July agreement, which led to the resumption of some of Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports and helped to bring down global prices of wheat and corn.

“We should make sure that the grain deliveries go on,” Mr. Erdogan said during a brief appearance sitting alongside Mr. Putin in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

Meanwhile, Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations atomic agency who met earlier this week with Mr. Putin and is in Kyiv for discussions with the Ukrainian government, said he is making progress in trying to get both sides to agree on the creation of a safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear-power plant.

Speaking to reporters Thursday evening, Mr. Grossi said the situation at the plant remains as dangerous as it has been in the last couple of months, with external power repeatedly being knocked out and shelling near the plant. He said the central goal of his proposal would be to stop the plant from being attacked and to stop it from being used by occupying Russian forces as a base to attack elsewhere.

Mr. Grossi said he raised with Russian authorities what he called the unacceptable detention of the previous head of the Zaporizhzhia plant and this week’s detention of the deputy head of the plant.

“The work continues…we are making progress and I hope to be back soon,” he said, adding that it was possible he would meet with Mr. Putin again.

—Katia Rudeshko, Yuliya Chernova and Jared Malsin contributed to this article.

Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com