Russia reports nuclear facility targeted in massive Ukrainian drone attack

Ukraine launched a barrage of over 100 drones at Russia overnight, targeting the country’s energy infrastructure and killing two people, Russian authorities reported on Wednesday morning.

In its daily briefing, Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences had shot down 104 Ukrainian drones over nine Russian regions through the night, with almost half of them intercepted over the country’s western Kursk region on the border with Ukraine.

In the neighbouring Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that a drone strike on a private house on the outskirts of the regional capital Belgorod had killed a two-year-old child and his mother, with another child and the father also hospitalised.

Vasily Anokhin, governor of Russia’s western Smolensk region — which saw a prominent military aircraft factory targeted in a previous Ukrainian drone attack last week — said that “civilian objects” had been targeted late on Tuesday night and that one drone had been shot down during an “attempted attack on a nuclear energy facility” in the region.

The Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant, one of the largest in western Russia, told state news agency RIA Novosti on Wednesday morning that it was operating as normal following the attack.

Falling drone debris also caused a fire at a Lukoil refinery in the town of Kstovo near Nizhny Novgorod in central Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region Governor Gleb Nikitin said, while airports in the cities of St. Petersburg, Kazan and Murmansk temporarily suspended flights amid the drone attacks.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on Tuesday night that two women had been killed in a Russian missile strike on a food facility in the southern city of Mykolayiv.

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russia launched a total of 53 drones at nine regions of the country overnight, with 29 downed by Ukrainian air defence systems and a further 14 failing to reach their targets.