Ukrainian Strikes Kill Four in Crimea, Russian Officials Say
Aksyonov gave no details of any further casualties, but said falling drone debris had damaged several buildings.
A fresh round of strikes in Crimea left four people dead, Kremlin-installed officials said, underscoring how the war’s reach continues to widen a day after Moscow and Kyiv exchanged attacks on each other’s cities.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, said Ukrainian forces struck a non-residential area of Simferopol, the peninsula’s main administrative centre, killing three people and wounding seven.
- Advertisement -
He later said on Telegram that a separate Ukrainian drone attack hit a commuter train in eastern Crimea, killing one person and injuring three others.
Ukraine did not immediately comment.
Aksyonov gave no details of any further casualties, but said falling drone debris had damaged several buildings.
Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014, years before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, after street protests in Kyiv drove a Moscow-aligned Ukrainian president from power. The peninsula remains a favoured holiday destination for Russian tourists.
Crimea has also been forced to respond to fuel shortages as Ukrainian strikes on oil infrastructure have intensified, including attacks far from the front and deep inside Russian territory.
Stalled talks
Talks brokered by the United States and intended to nudge the more than four-year-old war toward an end have lost momentum, with Washington’s attention fixed on its war with Iran.
On Thursday, Russian shelling killed at least three civilians in Kramatorsk, one of Ukraine’s so-called fortress cities near the front line, while eight other people were wounded in the area around Dnipro, according to local and regional officials.
On Friday, firefighters were battling a blaze in the Boryspil district outside Kyiv after a drone strike hit an industrial facility, leaving one person injured, Ukraine’s emergency service said.
In Russia’s Bryansk border region, the acting governor said a Ukrainian drone strike killed a crane operator.
Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s oil sector has included a strike on an oil terminal in St Petersburg on Wednesday. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said attacks of that kind help Ukraine “to end this war on equal footing”.
Twenty-three people were killed in attacks on Ukrainian cities on Tuesday after Moscow said it would begin “systematic” strikes following a drone attack on a dormitory in Russian-occupied territory. Ukraine has denied targeting the dormitory.
