Ukraine repels major Russian drone attack

KYIV: The Ukrainian air force said Saturday that it had repelled a Russian drone attack overnight, shooting down 30 of 31 drones launched by Moscow.

The attack targeted regions including the capital Kyiv, the southern region of Kherson as well as the western Khmelnytsky region.

“A total of 31 Shahed-136/131 attack drones were used in the attack, which the occupiers sent to different region of Ukraine,” the Ukrainian air force said in a statement.

Kherson was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in November 2022 but has since faced relentless shelling by Russian forces from the opposite bank of the adjoining Dnipro River.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities reported that one person had died in overnight Ukrainian bombings on the occupied southern Kherson region.

The governor of the Russian region of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported that there had been 41 Ukrainian strikes in the last 24 hours on the territory, which borders Ukraine.

Russia said Friday that it had thwarted a series of Ukrainian drone attacks in two border regions.

Over a two-hour period, 26 drones were shot down over the Crimea peninsula annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the defence ministry said in a statement, without saying if there were any victims or damage.

Earlier, the ministry said in posts on Telegram that six drones targeting “installations on Russian territory” were shot down in the Kursk region, again without providing further details.

Drone attacks have been almost daily occurrences in Russia’s border regions, though mass attacks are less common.

Russia, meanwhile, bombards Ukrainian towns almost daily. This week, it launched a massive drone attack on southern Ukraine and fired ballistic missiles at Kyiv, where about 50 people were wounded by debris.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian missile attack on a Russian-held village in southern Ukraine killed two people, Moscow’s occupying authorities in the Kherson region said on Saturday.

Moscow’s forces said the missile hit the village of Nova Mayachka, on the Russian-occupied bank of the Dnipro river and located some 70 kilometres (40 miles) east of the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson.

“Two civilians were killed. Two other (civilians) were wounded,” Moscow-appointed official Vladimir Saldo said.

A US-made HIMARS missile hit in the village of Nova Mayachka “during the delivery of humanitarian aid”, according to Saldo.

Other missiles, which he said were launched by Kyiv, had been downed by air defence.

Military personnel helping to deliver the aid had also been wounded.

“The wounded have been given the necessary medical help and emergency services are working at the scene,” he said.

Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine has dragged on for nearly two years. The front has barely moved in southern and eastern Ukraine for months.