Ukrainian drones killed four people, including a child, in the central Russian city of Ryazan yesterday, damaging high-rise apartment buildings and hitting an unnamed industrial enterprise, the regional governor said.
Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, said separately that Ukrainian drones had struck a large oil refinery in Ryazan which has been hit multiple times, with the most recent confirmed strike occurring last December.
Kyiv has stepped up drone attacks on targets deep inside Russia, aiming to knock out oil refineries, depots and pipelines as both sides seek to degrade each other’s infrastructure in more than four years of war.
Pavel Malkov, the governor of the Ryazan region, said 99 Ukrainian drones had been involved in the overnight attack, that two high-rise apartment blocks had been damaged, and that debris from falling drones had landed on the territory of an industrial site, which he did not identify. Twelve people had been injured, seven of whom were being treated in hospital, he said.
Malkov said work was under way to deal with the consequences of the attack and promised financial help for those whose relatives had been killed or injured. Ukraine did not immediately comment on Malkov’s remarks, reports Reuters.
The Ryazan region is southeast of Moscow. Its most southerly frontier is 220 miles (354 km) from the Ukrainian border.
Meanwhile, 34 European states plus Australia, Costa Rica and the EU said yesterday they would join a future special tribunal for Ukraine to prosecute Russia over its invasion of the country.
President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an accord with the Council of Europe last year to create a legal body to prosecute the “crime of aggression” in the invasion Russia launched in 2022, reports AFP.
The Council of Ministers -- comprising foreign ministers from the organisation’s 46-member states -- in a meeting approved a resolution laying the groundwork for the future tribunal, it said in a statement.
It added that 34 of the council’s member states plus the European Union as an institution and Costa Rica and Australia had “expressed their intention” to join in the agreement establishing the court.
