At least two individuals lost their lives in a Ukrainian rocket attack on the southwestern Belgorod region on Monday afternoon, coinciding with a previous drone strike that left thousands of residents without electricity.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod, announced that one of the deceased was a utility worker involved in restoring power to local homes. While he did not specify the exact location or timing of the attack, unconfirmed information from Telegram news outlets indicated that a power station in Belgorod city was struck in the rocket assault.
Gladkov added that the second victim, a man, succumbed to his injuries in a hospital after the attack.
Prior to this, the governor reported that approximately 40,000 residents in the Belgorod region initially faced power outages due to drone strikes targeting the energy sector. As of Monday morning, around 5,400 residents remained without electricity.
On Monday, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated that its air defense systems had eliminated 251 Ukrainian drones overnight, representing one of the largest counteroffensives from Ukraine against Russia this year.
In the western Bryansk region, where the governor had issued warnings about imminent drone strikes, local emergency authorities informed media that damage occurred to energy infrastructure following three “man-made fires.”
The Telegram channel Astra reported identifying a location of a Ukrainian drone attack in the Bryansk region at the Klintsy power station. Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk, mentioned that eight Ukrainian drones were intercepted overnight, resulting in no injuries but prompting emergency services to respond.
Astra also reported, citing eyewitness video footage, that Ukrainian drones appeared to target an explosives factory in Dzerzhinsk, a town in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow. Governor Gleb Nikitin indicated that 20 drones had struck the town’s industrial area, leading to at least one injury as well as damage and fires in nearby residential zones.
In parallel, widespread drone attacks were reported across the annexed territory of Crimea overnight. A pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel claimed that a significant fire broke out at an oil loading terminal in the coastal town of Feodosia.
The Moscow Times was unable to immediately confirm these reports.
According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, nearly half of the 251 Ukrainian drones destroyed between Sunday night and Monday morning were downed over Crimea, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov. Numerous others were shot down in the Kursk and Belgorod regions.
On Sunday evening, eight airports in southern and central Russia imposed flight limitations, although most had resumed normal operations by the following morning.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that a drone was shot down while approaching the capital before dawn.
