MOSCOW – The head of the Kremlin-backed government in annexed Crimea blamed Ukraine on Monday for a deadly drone strike, while Kyiv said a Russian attack had killed two people in the country’s southeast. Sergey Aksyonov said the Ukrainian military had targeted the Crimean resort town of Foros, damaging the grounds of a sanatorium and a school building. “According to updated data, three people were killed and 16 were wounded as a result of (the) UAV attack,” Aksyonov said on Telegram. Fragments of the downed drone also caused a fire near the coastal city of Yalta, he said. Russia’s defence ministry called the strike a “terrorist attack” and initially put the death toll at two. Ukraine said Moscow had carried out 46 air strikes on its territory as of 10:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Sunday.
Kyiv said overnight Russian strikes in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia had killed two people and wounded two others, one seriously. Russian forces had “dropped at least five” bombs on the city, according to Ivan Fedorov, the head of the regional military administration.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum denounced by the international community, and wants Kyiv and Western countries to recognise the peninsula as part of its territory. Ukrainian forces frequently carry out strikes on the heavily fortified region, including on a bridge connecting it to the Russian mainland. After meeting Russian leader Vladimir Putin for high-profile talks last month, US President Donald Trump said Ukraine would not be able to regain Crimea as part of a peace deal. Progress towards a truce has stalled since that flurry of diplomacy, which also saw Trump hold a separate meeting with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. In the meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump a one-year extension on Monday to the last treaty limiting both countries’ nuclear weapons while they discuss what comes next.
