Russia on Friday attacked various sites in Ukraine, including a defense event on the outskirts of Kiev where air defense technologies such as drones were being demonstrated.
At times deadly attacks elsewhere in the country have disrupted power supplies in five different areas.
Meanwhile, Ukraine again attacked the facilities of Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, this time in President Vladimir Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg.
And in the skies over Romania, NATO jets shot down a stray drone on Friday morning, with no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Across the Atlantic, the White House said President Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky will hold talks on Tuesday next week, nearly four and a half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
What happened in Ukraine?
Acting regional military administration chief Ruslan Oleynik said the attack took place on the grounds of a privately run military training site, which was hosting an event at the time. The site is about 20–30 kilometers (12–18 mi) from central Kyiv in the Bucha district.
Attorney General Ruslan Kravchenko described the attack as a war crime, saying 10 people were killed and nearly 100 more were injured.
The surrounding area was also repeatedly attacked, with Zelensky posting photos of the destruction and rescue efforts from the wider Kyiv area.
“Interceptors are the number one priority for the Patriot system,” he said, a reference to air defense systems made by US arms giant Raytheon, which sent a delegation to Kiev on Thursday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also acknowledged the attack online, saying it had used “high-precision long-range weapons” to target a “demonstration of unmanned aerial vehicles.” [UAVs or drones]”, including promising ones of Ukrainian and foreign production, are used to attack civilian targets in Russia.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that at the time of the attack, prominent defense industry officials and Ukrainian military members were at the site, adding that these individuals were “directly planning and carrying out attacks on Russian territory.”
Five people were reported killed in the eastern region of Sloviansk on Friday. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, expressed sadness over one such attack on the “Honorary Consulate of Latvia” in Slovensk, saying, “We will summon Russia’s ambassador to the EU over today’s attacks,” and that she would propose further EU sanctions targeting Russia’s “military-industrial complex.”
Ukraine’s energy company Ukranergo reported damage to power plants in five different regions, saying about 150,000 people were left without power after an attack on a facility in the Chernihiv region alone.
What happened in Russia?
The latest Ukrainian drone strikes hit warehouses at online retail giant Wildberry on Friday in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin’s powerbase for decades.
Company founder Tatyana Kim said the attacks hit facilities in occupied Ukraine including St. Petersburg, the nearby Leningrad region and Simferopol, a city in illegally annexed Crimea.
A large plume of smoke was seen rising over central St. Petersburg on Friday morning.
Ukraine has attacked a series of WildBerries facilities in recent days, causing major fires. It describes the sites as logistics hubs and says they provide components that Russia uses for military equipment such as drones. Analysts also speculate that it may be an attempt to make ordinary Russians feel the consequences of the war and realize that their government cannot protect their interests.
What happened in Romania?
Romania’s Defense Ministry, and later NATO, also said on Friday that Alliance aircraft had shot down a stray drone that had entered Romanian airspace.
Bucharest’s Defense Ministry said A Romanian F-16 fighter aircraft targeted the drone and shot it down “in a non-populated area in the vicinity of Padina, Buzău County.”
It described a flight path entering its airspace around Sulina, a town on the border with Ukraine’s southwestern tip, across the Black Sea from occupied Crimea. It moved west and inland, and reached near Buzau. After tracking the drone for more than an hour, a Romanian Air Force jet shot it down just after 11 a.m. local time, the ministry said.
This year there have been several incidents of stray drones infiltrating NATO members, particularly in the Baltic, but sometimes also in the South. Ukraine blames Russia for jamming the drones’ navigation systems and causing them to encroach on other countries’ airspace.
Edited by: Shawn Sinico
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