Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
The Russian defence ministry said on Sunday that its air defence units destroyed a total of 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.Of those, 16 were downed over the southwestern region of Voronezh, nine over the territory of the Belgorod region and the rest over the Rostov and Kursk regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
In a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian border region of Belgorod, three people were injured, including a 7-year-old, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier on the Telegram messaging app.Also Read: Putin, in military fatigues, orders swift defeat of Ukrainian forces in Kursk
Two of the people were injured after a drone hit their house, sparking a fire in the Gubkinsky district of the region, while the other person was injured in a drone attack on the village of Dolgoye, Gladkov said.
Alexander Gusev, governor of Voronezh, said on Telegram that there was no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The acting governor of the southern Russian region of Rostov said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage reported there either.
In Ukraine, authorities reported several Russian drone strikes, including on the northern region of Chernihiv, where firefighters were battling a blaze at a high-rise building that was sparked by Russian drone attack, Ukraine’s state of emergency service said.
Ukrainian media reported a series of explosions in the region surrounding the capital Kyiv, after Ukraine’s air force issued warnings of a threat of drone attacks on Kyiv and a number of other central Ukrainian regions.
(Edited by : Priyanka deshpande)
