Russia says 20 Ukrainian drones destroyed over Crimea

Russian defence ministry says 20 Ukrainian drones were shot down and electronically suppressed in early morning attack.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces destroyed a wave of 20 Ukrainian drones over the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

There were no casualties and no damage as a result of the attempted attack early on Saturday morning, the defence ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

Fourteen drones were destroyed by air defence systems and six were suppressed by electronic warfare, the ministry said.

It was not immediately clear what was the target of the reported attacks on the peninsula.

Sergei Kryuchkov, an adviser to the Russia-installed governor of Crimea, said earlier that air defence systems were engaged in repelling air attacks in different parts of the peninsula.

Crimea transport authorities said on their Telegram channel that traffic on the Crimean Bridge, which links the Black Sea peninsula with the Russian region of Krasnodar, was suspended for about two hours from 01:30am local time (22:30 GMT on Friday).

The reported attack on Crimea is just the latest use by Ukraine of armed drones targeting deep inside Russia and Russian-controlled territory, though Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for such operations.

On Friday, Russian officials said that Ukrainian drones were shot down while attempting to attack Moscow – the third straight day of attempts to hit targets in the Russian capital, while Russian missiles killed an 8-year-old boy in Western Ukraine on the same day.

The missile that killed the boy struck a house in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region, about 100km (60 miles) from the Polish border, according to the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

The drone that was shot down near Moscow on Friday plunged onto the Karamyshevskaya Embankment, officials said, which is about 5km (3 miles) from a Moscow business district that was hit twice in previous drone incidents.

Reports of drones in the area disrupted flights at two Russian airports on Friday.

Flights later resumed at Vnukovo airport, one of Moscow’s busiest, and at Kaluga airport, southwest of the city. It was the third day in a row that Vnukovo airport halted flights due to drone attacks.