(Reuters) -Three people were killed in overnight Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s Tula and Nizhny Novgorod regions, a senior Russian regional official and the defence ministry said on Monday.
Two people died and two were hospitalised following an attack before midnight on Sunday on the Tula region that borders the Moscow region to its north, Tula Governor Dmitry Milyaev said on the Telegram messaging app.
One person was killed and two others were hospitalised following a Ukrainian attack targeting an industrial zone in the Nizhny Novgorod region in western Russia, Gleb Nikitin, the governor of the region, said on the Telegram.
A Ukrainian security official told Reuters that Ukraine had targeted a Russian plant producing missile components in the Nizhny Novgorod region in the drone attack.
At least four drones struck the Arzamas Instrument-Making Plant, which produces control systems and other components for Russia’s Kh-32 and Kh-101 missiles, the official said.
Russian air defence units destroyed a total of 59 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 12 over the Tula region, the Russian Defence Ministry said. The ministry only reports how many drones its units shoot down, not how many Ukraine launches.
Seven drones were downed en route to Russia’s capital overnight and on Monday morning, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strikes on each other’s territory. Nevertheless, thousands of civilians have died in the full-scale war that Russia launched in Ukraine in February 2022.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Tom Balmforth in London; Editing by Diane Craft, Lincoln Feast and Hugh Lawson)
