Russia shoots down drones in border region

Perpetrators of cross-border raid wiped out, says Moscow

KYIV: Russian forces shot down “a large number” of drones in the country’s southern Belgorod region, a local official said on Wednesday, a day after Moscow announced that its forces crushed a cross-border raid in the area from Ukraine.

The drones were intercepted overnight over the region, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a Telegram post. No one had been hurt, he added, but unspecified administrative buildings, residential buildings and cars were damaged.

Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

The assault came after Russia said on Tuesday it beat back one of the war’s most serious crossborder attacks, with the Defense Ministry saying that more than 70 attackers were killed in a battle in Belgorod that lasted about 24 hours. It made no mention of any Russian casualties.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said local troops, air strikes and artillery routed the attackers.

Twelve local civilians were wounded in the attack, officials said, and an older woman died during an evacuation.

Details of the incident in the rural region, lying about 80 kilometers (45 miles) north of the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and far from the front lines of the almost 15-month war, are unclear.

Moscow blamed the incursion that began on Monday on Ukrainian military saboteurs. Kyiv described it as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans. It was impossible to reconcile the two versions, to say with certainty who was behind the attack or to ascertain its aims.

The region is a Russian military hub holding fuel and ammunition depots. Moscow officials declined to say how many attackers were involved in the assault or comment on why efforts to put down the attackers took so long.

Belgorod, like its neighboring Bryansk region and other border areas, has witnessed sporadic spillover from the war, which Russia started by invading Ukraine on

Feb. 24, 2022.

Elsewhere, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Wednesday that “heavy fighting” continued inside Bakhmut, days after Russia said that it completely captured the devastated eastern city.

Bakhmut lies in Donetsk province, one of four that Russia illegally annexed last fall. The nine-month battle for Bakhmut has killed tens of thousands of people as Ukraine pursues its strategy of grinding down the Kremlin’s invasion forces.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces, said Kyiv’s forces “are continuing their defensive operation” in Bakhmut, and have attained unspecified “successes” on the city’s outskirts. He gave no further details.

Ukrainian officials have insisted the battle for Bakhmut isn’t over.