MOSCOW: A Ukrainian attack led to water and power cuts in occupied Crimea Saturday, as a barrage of drones in several regions inside Russia left several dead, according to Russian authorities.
Ukrainian officials said Russian drone and missile strikes across eastern Ukraine killed at least five people on Saturday.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-installed head of the Crimean peninsula, wrote on Telegram that due to the drone attack on local power grids “restrictions on the supply of electricity and water have been put in place.”
He did not specify how many households had been affected in Crimea, which is home to more than 2.5 million people.
The peninsula, which was seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, is a regular target for Ukrainian attacks.
A separate Ukrainian strike in part of the northeastern Kharkiv region held by Russia killed at least three people and gravely wounded another on Saturday, said the Moscow-backed authorities.
Drones also rained down inside Russia. The country’s defense ministry said 616 of them had been shot down overnight across more than 20 regions of the country.
During the day, drones hit Russia’s southwestern Bryansk border region, killing at least three people, regional acting governor Yegor Kovalchuc said on Telegram.
A 65-year-old man was fatally wounded when a drone strike hit the Klimovsky district, where another person was injured, he added.
Two men were also killed in Pogarsky district, when a drone hit a minibus belonging to an agricultural firm, injuring two others, he said.
Yet another strike in the region hit a shopping center in the village of Klimovo, injuring two people, while another person was injured when a residential building in Klintsovsky district was hit, Kovalchuc said.
Three bodies were also pulled from the rubble after a Friday night attack on a factory in Oryol, about 370 kilometers (230 miles) southwest of Moscow, Russian authorities said.
Southeastern Russia also faced a barrage of drones that damaged industrial infrastructure in Togliatti, on the Volga river, the city’s mayor, Ilya Sukhikh said.
On the Ukrainian side, authorities said that at least five people died in several Russian drone and missile strikes in the east of the country.
Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha said Saturday evening that three people were killed and at least 12 wounded when a Russian drone strike hit the town of Synelnykove, setting the fourth floor of a high-rise building on fire.
Among those injured was an 11-year-old girl, he said on social media.
Regional authorities in Sumy meanwhile said a Russian drone hit a farm, killing a 31-year-old woman and injuring four others.
And a 45-year-old man died when Russian missiles hit the city of Lozova in Khariv region, while two other men were injured, the head of the Kharkiv regional state administration, Oleg Synegubov, said on Telegram.