Shelling kills 2 in the Kherson region, as a drone attack sparks fire at oil depot in Russia’s southwest

KYIV (AP): Russian shelling of Ukraine’s Kherson region killed two people, local officials said, as the two countries exchanged drone attacks overnight into Saturday.

Two others were wounded in the attack close to the regional capital, said Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the partly occupied Kherson region.

In Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, an oil depot in the Tsimlyansky District, deep inside the region, was set ablaze in the early hours of Saturday following a Ukrainian drone attack — the latest long-range strike by Kyiv’s forces on a border region.

Ukraine has in recent months stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to slow down the Kremlin’s war machine. Moscow’s army is pressing hard along the front line in eastern Ukraine, where a shortage of troops and ammunition in the third year of war has made defenders vulnerable.

Rostov regional Gov. Vasily Golubev said the drone attack had caused a fire spanning 200 square meters (2,100 square feet), but there were no casualties. Some five hours after he reported the fire on Telegram, Golubev said the fire had been extinguished.

In addition to two drones being intercepted over the Rostov region, Russian air defense systems overnight destroyed two drones over the country’s western Kursk and Belgorod regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Saturday.

Ukraine’s air defenses, meanwhile, intercepted four of the five drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said Saturday morning. Mykola Oleschuk, commander of Ukraine’s Air Forces, said the fifth drone left Ukrainian airspace in the direction of Belarus.

In other developments, Vadym Filashkin, the Ukrainian governor of the partly occupied eastern Donetsk region, said Saturday that Russian attacks on Friday had killed six people and wounded a further 22.