(ANSA-AFP) - KYIV, JUN 25 - Ukraine on Saturday said Russia was aiming to drag its ally Belarus into the war, after reporting that missiles which struck a border region near Kyiv came from Belarusian territory. Twenty rockets fired from Belarusian territory and the air targeted the village of Desna in the northern Chernigiv region at around 05:00 am (0200 GMT) on Saturday, Ukraine's northern military command wrote in a statement on Facebook. Ukraine's intelligence service said six Russian bombers fired 12 cruise missiles from the town of Petrykaw in southern Belarus after taking off from a Russian airbase. It added that Russian forces hit targets in the northern Kyiv and Sumy regions. The Ukrainian intelligence service said on Telegram that the action was "directly linked to Kremlin efforts to pull Belarus as a co-belligerent into the war in Ukraine". The "massive bombardment" struck infrastructure but had not caused any casualties, the Ukrainian army added. Desna, a small village with a pre-war population of around 7,500 people, lies 70 kilometres (43 miles) to the north of Kyiv and a similar distance to the south of Ukraine's border with Belarus.

(ANSA-AFP).