Ukrainian drone strikes killed five people, including two children, in Russia and on the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula, in attacks that also triggered a fire at a major oil depot in the country's south, local officials said Thursday.
Ukraine has stepped up strikes on Russia in recent months in retaliation for Moscow's near-daily barrages of drones and missiles throughout its five-year offensive, AFP reported.
Russia's defense ministry said it downed 269 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russia and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
In Crimea, which Ukraine is trying to cut-off from Russian logistics and supply routes, the Russia-appointed governor Sergey Aksyonov said: "Two people, including a child, were killed and two others wounded ... as a result of overnight enemy attacks.
Drone strikes also killed two people in the border Bryansk region -- a 23-year-old driver and 15-year-old girl -- and one in the Belgorod region, regional authorities said.
Kyiv insists that the Ukrainian army first and foremost targets military installations and energy infrastructure, in a bid to deprive the Kremlin's war chest of vital fossil fuel revenues.
In Russia's southern Krasnodar Krai region, debris from a drone strike triggered a fire at an oil depot, authorities said Thursday.
"Following the fall of UAV debris, a fire broke out at the Poltavskaya oil depot," Aleksandr Kharitonov, head of Krasnoarmeysk district in Krasnodar Krai, wrote on Russia's state-run Max platform.
Ukraine's air force said Russia fired 90 drones and an Iskander missile -- launched from Crimea -- at Ukraine overnight, adding that 83 of the drones had been shot down.
But Ukraine's state railway operator said a crew member was killed in a strike on a train in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
