KYIV: Russia thwarted an attack by 20 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow-annexed Crimea overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday.
Fourteen drones were shot down by Russian air defenses and a further six were jammed electronically, the ministry said in a Telegram post. No casualties or damage were reported.
The overnight attacks followed three consecutive days of drone attacks on the Russian capital, Moscow. Firing drones at Russia, after more than 17 months of war has little apparent military value for Ukraine, but the strategy has served to unsettle Russians and bring home to them the conflict’s consequences.
Drone attacks have increased in recent weeks both on Moscow and on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 — a move that most of the world considered illegal.
Kyiv officials neither confirmed nor denied Ukraine’s possible involvement in the attempted attacks.
Elsewhere, Russia claimed Saturday it had regained control of the village of Urozhaine in Ukraine’s easternmost Luhansk region in an overnight counterattack.
A 73-year-old woman was killed early Saturday morning in Russian shelling of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, according to regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
Ukrainian internal affairs minister Ihor Klymenko said a police officer was killed and 12 people wounded when a guided Russian aerial bomb hit the city of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s partially occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region. Four of the wounded were also police officers, he said.