This is the dramatic moment Russia shoots down 26 drones over Crimea as Putin’s Kremlin accuses Ukraine of staging an assault on the annexed peninsula.
Russia said on Friday that it had thwarted a series of Ukrainian drone attacks in two border regions.
Over a two-hour period, 26 drones were shot down over the Crimea peninsula annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the defence ministry said in a statement, without saying if there were any victims or if any damage was sustained.
A ministry statement said the interceptions took place between 8.30pm and 10.30pm local time.
Earlier, the ministry said in posts on Telegram that six drones targeting ‘installations on Russian territory’ were shot down in the Kursk region, again without providing further details.
Videos showed drones purportedly being shot down on Friday evening
Drone attacks have been almost daily occurrences in Russia’s border regions, though mass attacks are less common.
The governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, confirmed the attacks on Telegram, asking residents in the area to ‘stay calm’.
The capital Moscow and its outskirts have also been targets of Ukrainian drone attacks.
Video purportedly showed a drone attack on Crimea. A separate video appeared to show show shots directed towards a drone
Russia, meanwhile, bombards Ukrainian towns almost daily. This week, it launched a massive drone attack on southern Ukraine and fired ballistic missiles at Kyiv, where about 50 people were wounded by debris.
Crimea was seized from Ukraine by Russian troops and annexed in 2014.