The Russian administration in annexed Crimea said on Sunday that it had repelled during the night a raid by a dozen Ukrainian drones on Sevastopol, when an offensive by kyiv was looming.
"
During the night anti-aircraft defense and electronic warfare units repelled a new attack on Sevastopol
", the home port of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, said Mikhail Razvojayev, the governor of the city.
In a message on Telegram, he claimed that “
more than a dozen drones
” had been launched by Ukraine, saying that two of them were shot down over the sea and another fell in a forest after "
losing control
".
"
No infrastructure in the city suffered any damage
," added Mikhail Razvojayev.
The day before, the Russian authorities had announced that they had shot down a Ukrainian ballistic missile over Crimea, an event rarely reported.
Multiplication of strikes in Russia
Since the summer of 2022, the peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014, has been regularly hit by drone attacks.
At the end of April, one of them caused a huge fire in an oil depot in Sevastopol.
Drone strikes, sabotage and alleged attacks have multiplied in recent weeks in Russia, sometimes far from Ukraine, without their perpetrators being clearly identified.
Read alsoIn Ukraine, battle of drones on the banks of the Dnieper: the story of the special envoy of Figaro
The Kremlin designates Kiev, which denies, as a major offensive by Ukrainian troops and the major celebrations in Russia on May 9, commemorating the capitulation of Nazi Germany in 1945. Sunday, the governor of the Russian region of Belgorod also reported an overnight shelling of a locality on the Ukrainian border, Spodariouchino, causing damage to a power line and a gas pipe.