Local officials in Crimea reported that Ukrainian military drone attacks overnight killed at least four people and injured ten others across the peninsula.
Crimean Governor Sergey Aksyonov stated that one person died and three were wounded during a drone strike targeting a suburban train traveling from Azovskoye to Kerch. Additional strikes damaged nonresidential facilities in Simferopol, resulting in at least three fatalities and seven injuries.
Sevastopol, home to the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was also attacked overnight, according to its governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev.
At least 20 Ukrainian drones were intercepted by air defenses during the strikes, with two incidents involving debris falling in residential areas but no injuries reported from those events.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that a total of 272 drones were shot down across multiple regions of Russia on Thursday morning, including Crimea and the waters of the Azov and Black Seas, as well as the territories of Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orel, Rostov, Ryazan, and Tambov.
The attacks follow a Ukrainian drone strike on a passenger bus traveling from Moscow to Simferopol through the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on May 23, which killed eight civilians and injured eleven others. These incidents have been labeled by Russian authorities as terrorism.
Such actions occur after Ukraine’s military targeted a college dormitory in Starobelsk, Lugansk People’s Republic, on May 22, killing 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injuring dozens of others.
In response to such incidents, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the Ukrainian leadership as having “opened a new chapter in its crime spree.”