Ukraine drones damage power infrastructure in Sergiyev Posad near Moscow, Russia says

Ukraine launched a drone attack on the Sergiyev Posad district near Moscow early on Friday, injuring one person and leaving parts of the religiously significant centre without power, the head of the district said.

“I ask everyone to remain calm, not to approach the windows, not to photograph the work of the air defence,” Oksana Yerokhanova wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

She said that at least four explosions were recorded in the district - some 75 km (47 miles) from the Kremlin - and that a power substation was damaged, leaving swaths of the district without electricity.

The district’s administrative centre, the town of Sergiyev Posad, is considered the religious centre of the Moscow Region and a spiritual heart of Russia’s Orthodox Church.

The city’s monastery, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius that was founded in the 14th century, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram that its air defence units destroyed 48 Ukrainian drones overnight over five Russian regions.

The ministry, which only reports how many drones its forces destroy, not how many Ukraine launches, did not list the Moscow region as one where drones were downed.

Ukraine says Russian strikes hit Kyiv, Odesa, killing three

In the southern Russian region of Rostov a woman was killed as a result of Ukraine’s drone attacks, which damaged several apartment buildings and forced the evacuation of scores of people from their homes, the acting governor of the region said on Friday.

The most serious damage was reported in the Azov district of the Rostov region, acting Governor Yuri Slyusar, where the roof of a 40-apartment building was destroyed.

Some 120 residents were being evacuated, Slyusar said on Telegram early on Friday.

The defence ministry said that it destroyed 26 Ukrainian drones over the region. There was no comment from Ukraine.

Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts and are in response to continuous Russian strikes on Ukraine.

An all-night Russian attack on Kyiv injured at least 14 people on Friday.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.