Russia and Ukraine have traded deadly overnight drone attacks, killing four people in Ukraine’s southern port city of Kherson and towns along Russia’s southern Black Sea coast, according to regional officials.
A Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk overnight Tuesday into Wednesday killed a child, injured another child and woman, and damaged dozens of buildings, including homes, reported mayor Andrei Kravchenko. A total of eight people in the city were injured, said Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of the Krasnodar region that includes Novorossiysk.
Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said Ukrainian drones “heavily pounded” the Novorossiysk port, through which “a significant share of [Russia’s] domestic grant exports” pass.
Drone strikes also damaged the Novorossiysk grain terminal, according to the terminal’s owner, Demetra Holding.
“Novorossiysk endured a horrific night,” Kravchenko wrote in a post on Telegram.
Another person was killed when drone debris fell into the garden of a house in the village of Volna, said Kondratyev.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian drones damaged several homes in Russia-occupied Crimea, said local governor Mikhail Razvozhayev.
Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military used jet-powered drones, missiles and unmanned naval systems to target a naval base in Novorossiysk, hitting “air defence positions, piers and seaport infrastructure”.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it downed and destroyed a total of 502 Ukrainian drones overnight.
