Ukraine and Russia exchanged a flurry of drone and missile attacks overnight, leaving at least seven dead across Ukraine and one person killed in southwestern Russia, officials in the two warring countries said Thursday morning.
Authorities in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine said a man was killed when a Ukrainian drone crashed into the truck he was driving. In a separate strike in the region, a man riding a motorcycle was wounded.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 630 Ukrainian drones had been tracked in the skies above the wider Moscow region overnight, with air defense systems intercepting 163 of the unmanned aircraft that were on a direct approach to the city. Two people were wounded in the Voronovo district, located to the southwest of central Moscow.
There were also reports of an explosion and fire south of the capital. The exiled news outlet Astra, using eyewitness footage of the fire, identified the targeted facility as a storage and logistics facility belonging to the Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, located in Serpukhov.
The Moscow Times could not independently verify those reports.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it intercepted 808 Ukrainian drones across Russia and annexed Crimea between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
Russian officials reported injuries in the border regions of Kursk amid the overnight air barrage. Residential buildings in the Lipetsk region were also damaged. Power lines were knocked down in the Voronezh and Kaluga regions.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russian attacks killed at least seven people across the country, including three in Zaporizhzhia, two in Donetsk, one in Sumy and a woman in the Kharkiv region.
The exchange of attacks came just hours after U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff concluded talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg to discuss renewing trilateral peace negotiations that have stalled since February.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that Kyiv supported a U.S. proposal for three-way talks with Moscow and Washington. The Kremlin said Putin had agreed to resume the U.S.-mediated talks as early as next month.
AFP and Reuters contributed reporting.
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