Ukraine’s military reported Monday shooting down 17 of 22 drones that Russia launched in overnight attacks that were aimed at areas nationwide.
The Ukrainian air force said the Russian attacks also included five missiles targeting the Kharkiv region, located along the Ukraine-Russia border, and two other missiles targeting the neighboring Sumy region.
The drones were widespread, with the Ukrainian military saying its intercepts took place over the Kyiv, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhya, and Rivne regions.
Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk, reported debris falling on the roof of a residential building and sparking a fire.
The drone attack also damaged residential buildings and industrial facilities in the Kirovohrad region, according to the regional governor Andriy Raykovych.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that his forces had an advantage on the battlefield in Ukraine, and that it might be necessary for Russian forces to create a buffer zone on the Ukrainian side of the border to prevent attacks on Russian territory.
Putin’s comments came after the latest Ukrainian drone strikes on a Russian oil refinery and Putin claiming a new six-year term in an internationally discredited election.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that “everything Russia does in the occupied territory of Ukraine is a crime.”
“There must be a just retribution for everything the Russian murderers have done in this war and for the sake of Putin’s lifelong power,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
Ukraine launched 35 drones across Russia that set off a brief fire at an oil refinery, targeted Moscow and affected electricity supplies in border areas, Russia said Sunday.
Of the drones launched by Ukraine, 17 were destroyed over the southern region of Krasnodar, four over the Moscow region and the rest over six other regions, the Russian defense ministry said on Telegram on Sunday.
“The drones were neutralized, but a fire broke out as a result of the fall of one of the devices,” the operational headquarters of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia said on Telegram.
The fire was put out after a few hours, and although it did not directly lead to any deaths, initial reports indicated at least one person died from a heart attack, the post said.
VOA could not independently verify those reports.
Since the war began in February 2022, Ukrainian attack drones launched by the SBU domestic security service have hit 12 Russian oil refineries, Reuters cited a Ukrainian intelligence source as saying.
The Belgorod regional governor said Ukrainian shelling killed one man and wounded 11 others in the region. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor, had said earlier Sunday that a 16-year-old girl had been killed in the border region when her house caught fire from a Ukrainian shell.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.