Ukraine drone attacks kill five in Russia and Crimea, including two children, as a major oil depot fire erupts in southern Russia.
MOSCOW: Ukrainian drone strikes killed five people, including two children, in Russia and on the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula, in attacks that also triggered a fire at a major oil depot in the country’s south, local officials said Thursday.
Ukraine has stepped up strikes on Russia in recent months in retaliation for Moscow’s near-daily barrages of drones and missiles throughout its five-year offensive.
Russia’s defence ministry said it downed 269 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russia and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
In Crimea, which Ukraine is trying to cut-off from Russian logistics and supply routes, the Russia-appointed governor Sergey Aksyonov said: “Two people, including a child, were killed and two others wounded … as a result of overnight enemy attacks.
Drone strikes also killed two people in the border Bryansk region — a 23-year-old driver and 15-year-old girl — and one in the Belgorod region, regional authorities said.
Kyiv insists that the Ukrainian army first and foremost targets military installations and energy infrastructure, in a bid to deprive the Kremlin’s war chest of vital fossil fuel revenues.
In Russia’s southern Krasnodar Krai region, debris from a drone strike triggered a fire at an oil depot, authorities said Thursday.
“Following the fall of UAV debris, a fire broke out at the Poltavskaya oil depot,” Aleksandr Kharitonov, head of Krasnoarmeysk district in Krasnodar Krai, wrote on Russia’s state-run Max platform.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 90 drones and an Iskander missile — launched from Crimea — at Ukraine overnight, adding that 83 of the drones had been shot down.
But Ukraine’s state railway operator said a crew member was killed in a strike on a train in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
