Agencies: Russia downed 11 Ukrainian drones nearing Crimea and two headed for Moscow, officials said yesterday, the latest in a blitz of air strikes on Russian-held territory.
"Two UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) flying in the direction of the city of Moscow were destroyed," the Russia's defence ministry said in a statement on Telegram.
It said one drone was shot down over the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow, and another over the Odintsovsky district bordering the capital. Those drones were shot down at around 4:00 am (0100 GMT), Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram.
Two other Ukrainian drones were shot down near the city of Sevastopol on the Crimean coast, the defence ministry said, and "another 9 were suppressed by means of electronic warfare and crashed in the Black Sea".
It said there were no reports of damage or casualties in any of the affected areas.
The strikes come a day after Russia said two Ukrainian combat drones headed for Moscow were shot down, and constitute at least the fourth attack near the capital within a week, reports AFP.
Russia previously said it downed a drone over Kaluga on Monday, as well as seven drones in the region last Thursday.
In a separate incident, Russian drones destroyed a fuel depot in Ukraine's western Rivne region in an overnight attack in the early hours of yesterday, causing a huge blaze, governor Vitaliy Koval said. There were no casualties, he said.
The Ukrainian air force said that seven out of 10 Iranian-made "Shahed" drones were shot down during the Russian attack which lasted from 23:00 (20:00 GMT) on Wednesday until 04:00 yesterday.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's navy said a new temporary Black Sea "humanitarian corridor" had started working yesterday and that the first ships were expected to use it within days.
Oleh Chalyk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy, told Reuters that the corridor would be used by commercial ships blocked at Ukraine's Black Sea ports and for grain and agricultural products.
In Zaporizhzhia, two young women and a man were killed and nine other people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city late on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.
Ukraine yesterday urged civilians near the northeastern front line to evacuate as Russia ramped up an assault to capture the territory already once seized during the conflict.
Kupiansk and the surrounding areas of Ukraine's Kharkiv region were liberated by Kyiv's forces last September, but Moscow has since pushed back on the region.
