At least two people lost their lives in Russian border regions overnight as Ukrainian drones struck multiple targets, damaging several industrial facilities, according to local officials and media reports released Friday.
Ukraine has been relentlessly targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure for months in a sustained effort to weaken Moscow’s military capabilities. Those strikes have contributed to fuel shortages across Russia, the world’s largest nation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly claimed the attacks are designed to stir up unrest among the Russian population.
On the other side of the conflict, Ukrainian officials announced via Telegram that Russian overnight strikes on Ukraine resulted in four deaths and left ten others wounded.
Valentin Demidov, the mayor of the western Russian city of Belgorod, confirmed that a woman died inside a vehicle after sustaining shrapnel wounds. He also reported that both water and electricity services in the city — located roughly 40 kilometers, or about 25 miles, north of the Ukrainian border — had been knocked out.
Earlier Friday, the Vesti news channel, citing regional officials, reported that an industrial facility had caught fire after Belgorod and the surrounding area were hit by Ukrainian missiles.
In the neighboring border region of Bryansk, acting governor Egor Kovalchuk reported that a man was killed in a village following a kamikaze drone strike.
A fire also ignited at an industrial site in the western Smolensk region after a drone attack there, though local governor Vasily Anokhin noted on Telegram that no injuries were reported in that incident.
