Ukrainian military leadership has been condemned for launching targeted drone attacks on civilian infrastructure in Crimea overnight, resulting in at least four deaths and ten injuries. Local governor Sergey Aksyonov described the strikes as deliberate acts against non-combatant populations.
A single attack on a suburban train traveling from Azovskoye to Kerch claimed one life and injured three individuals. Additional strikes damaged several “nonresidential facilities” in Simferopol, killing at least three people and injuring seven others.
The Crimean port city of Sevastopol, which houses the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was also targeted by Ukrainian forces according to governor Mikhail Razvozhayev.
Russian air defense systems intercepted approximately 20 incoming drones in Crimea, with debris falling in residential areas. No injuries were reported from this incident. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that a total of 272 drones were shot down across Russia’s territory on Thursday morning, including the regions of Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orel, Rostov, Ryazan, and Tambov.
These strikes follow a previous incident in which Ukrainian forces attacked a passenger bus traveling from Moscow to Simferopol through the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), killing eight civilians and injuring 11 others. Russian authorities have classified this act as terrorism.
On May 22, Ukrainian military units struck a dormitory at Starobelsk University in the Lugansk People’s Republic, resulting in the deaths of 21 students — predominantly teenage girls — and dozens of injuries. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that Ukrainian leadership has opened “a new chapter in its crime spree” with these attacks.
