A soldier from Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces handles a drone. Photo: EPA-EFE/KATERYNA KLOCHKO
Five people were killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a residential building in a border village in Russia’s western Kursk region in the early hours of Saturday morning, acting Kursk Governor Alexey Smirnov said on Telegram.
Two of the dead were young children, Smirnov said, with two more members of the same family in critical condition in hospital in the nearby city of Rylsk after a “copter”-style drone dropped an explosive on a house in the village of Gorodishche, just metres from the now-closed border with Ukraine.
In its daily report on drone strikes across the country, Russia’s Defence Ministry made no mention of any attack on the Kursk region, instead saying that it had shot down two drones over both the Tver region and occupied Crimea and one each over the Bryansk and Belgorod regions.
Bryansk region Governor Alexander Bogomaz confirmed that one drone had been downed over the region, while authorities in the Tver region said that three drones had been shot down.
Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of the city of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea, later said that three people had been hospitalised with “light shrapnel injuries” following an overnight missile attack.
News of the deaths in the Kursk region came as search and rescue operations continued in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro after a Russian missile attack on a residential building killed one person and injured 12 more on Friday evening.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said that two people had been pulled from the rubble on Saturday morning following an overnight rescue operation that involved over 100 emergency service workers. Dnipropetrovsk region Governor Serhiy Lysak said that five people remained missing after the strike, which destroyed the upper floors of a high-rise apartment block.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday’s attack showed that “only a sufficient quantity and quality of air defence systems and the world’s determination” could stop Russian terror.
