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No fewer than four people have died in a barrage of drone strikes in an overnight raid launched by Ukraine in Russia.
Russia’s defence ministry said it shot down 556 drones overnight across the country, with another 30 drones neutralised after dawn in one of the largest Ukrainian barrages of the ongoing conflict so far.
The drone strikes took place across 14 Russian regions, as well as the Crimean peninsula annexed from Ukraine and the Black and Azov seas, the ministry added, with the region around the capital among the worst-hit.
“A woman was killed as a result of a UAV hitting a private house. One more person is trapped under rubble,” the Moscow region’s Governor Andrey Vorobyov posted on Telegram, adding that the early morning attack also claimed the lives of two men.
“Since 3 o’clock in the morning, air defence forces have been repelling a large-scale UAV attack on the capital region,” he said, adding four people were wounded and infrastructure facilities had been targeted.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had vowed on Friday to launch more retaliatory strikes, a day after a Russian attack on Kyiv killed 24 people and injured around 50 more.
Credit: AFP.
Local authorities reported that air defence systems had intercepted more than 80 drones overnight, wounding 12 people in Moscow.
“Minor damage has been recorded at the sites where debris fell,” Mayor Sergei Sobyanin posted on Telegram.
Sobyanin added that one of the strikes wounded construction workers at a job site near an oil and gas refinery, and refinery production has not been disrupted, but three residential buildings were damaged.
AFP reported that while the capital region is often subjected to drone attacks, the city of Moscow, around 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the Ukrainian border, is less frequently targeted.
Regional authorities added that one man was killed overnight in the Shebekino district in a drone attack on a lorry in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine.
The Ukrainian air force said, meanwhile, it had intercepted 279 of 287 Russian drones launched.
In the wake of Moscow’s latest attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Zelensky insisted that Kyiv’s strategy of targeting military and energy sites within Russia, so as to strike at Moscow’s ability to finance the war effort, was “entirely justified”.
