Drone war: Deaths in Synelnykove and Belgorod, fire in Siberia
A Russian drone strike on an apartment building in Dnipropetrovsk region killed three people. In Belgorod a civilian died, Russia says, while a plant burned in Omsk, 2,500 km away.
Archive image · Photo: Wlados1991 / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (cropped and resized)
A Russian drone hit an apartment building on Saturday in Synelnykove in eastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. Three people were killed and at least 12 injured, including an 11-year-old girl, according to Governor Oleksandr Hanzha. A fire broke out on the fourth floor, and a shop and cars were also damaged. Overnight into Saturday, Russia launched 126 drones, 61 of them jet-powered, according to the Ukrainian Air Force; 101 were downed. Nationwide, four people were killed and 78 injured within a day.
Ukraine, for its part, attacked the Russian border city of Belgorod overnight into Sunday. The regional emergency headquarters reported a “massive” drone attack on the city center, saying one civilian was killed and 10 people were injured, including a paramedic. The monitoring channel Exilenova Plus named the closed MegaGRINN shopping center as the target; this has not been independently confirmed.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova Plus had already reported a fire at the Omsky Kauchuk petrochemical plant in the Siberian city of Omsk, about 2,500 kilometers from Ukraine. Governor Vitaly Khotsenko confirmed a drone attack on a logistics center in the city, saying employees had been evacuated. These claims also could not initially be independently verified.