Russia and Ukraine report casualties from overnight drone attacks

Russia and Ukraine both reported casualties from overnight drone strikes on Friday, as the two warring sides increasingly attack targets far beyond the front line.

Russian drone strikes in the eastern Ukrainian industrial city of Pavlohrad killed a man and injured four other people, the military governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Vladyslav Hayvanenko, wrote on Telegram.

He said five residential buildings caught fire.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia deployed 80 drones of various types in its overnight attacks. While 64 of them were intercepted, 12 hits were recorded in eight locations and drone debris fell in three other places, it said.

In the Russian city of Tver, seven people were injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a residential building, acting governor Vitaly Korolyov said, according to Russian news agencies.

Korolyov said a child was among those injured in the city, located around 200 kilometres north-west of Moscow. The damaged building was evacuated and all victims were being treated in hospital, he added.

The Defence Ministry in Moscow said around 90 drones were shot down in total during the night, including several approaching the Russian capital.

The independent news portal Astra said a refinery north of Moscow in the Yaroslavl region north of the capital once again came under fire.

Ukraine continues to fend off the full-scale invasion launched by Moscow in February 2022 with attacks of its own.

In addition to military infrastructure, it targets its larger neighbour’s energy industry in an attempt to disrupt the Russian military’s fuel supply and make it more difficult for Moscow to finance the war.

While the damage caused by Ukraine in Russia is now considerable, it remains far outweighed by the destruction and number of casualties caused by the Russian campaign since 2022.