Two killed in barrage of Russian drone strikes across Ukraine

Russia launched a barrage of drones across Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) reported on Saturday.

Of the 74 drones used in the attacks, 47 Shahed drones were shot down over 11 Ukrainian regions, while 27 dummy drones were lost in the air, according to the UAF statement.

One person was killed in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region in the early hours of Saturday, Governor Ivan Fedorov reported. A second was killed in a Russian strike on the front-line town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region on Friday, Governor Vadym Filashkin said.

The Russian Defence Ministry said that 85 Ukrainian drones had attacked targets across Russia overnight, adding that 45 of them had been intercepted over the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, while the rest had been shot down over six different Russian regions.

Emergency services in the city of Engels in Russia’s Volga region were for a fourth day continuing their attempts to extinguish a fire that broke out at an oil depot following a Ukrainian drone strike on Wednesday, according to Saratov Governor Roman Busargin, who added that they had so far only been able to reduce the fire’s size by 80%.