Ukraine drone attack kills one in Russia

MOSCOW (AFP): One person died in a Ukrainian drone attack Friday in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, Russian officials said, as dozens of the aerial weapons were shot down across the country.

The barrage marked the latest in a series of escalating aerial strikes from both sides nearly three years after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.

It came hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was to meet US Vice President JD Vance in Germany on Friday, and days after US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held watershed talks that have shaken Ukraine and Washington’s NATO allies.

“The most serious occurred in the Kukuyevka village — a man was killed by an explosive dropped on a house by a drone”, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram social media, adding that drones had damaged around 10 houses and numerous cars in two other villages.

Russia’s defense ministry said Friday it had shot down 50 drones overnight in various regions.

Russia also said that Ukraine had carried out an artillery strike against a power station in Zaporizhzhia, a southern Ukrainian region that Moscow annexed in September 2022, but that it does not fully control.

“Following the strike, energy equipment suffered critical damage” and 50,000 people lost power as a result in the city of Energodar, the local energy ministry was quoted as saying by the state news agency TASS.