Two dead in artillery shelling in Kherson region. Drone attack triggers fire at oil depot in southwest Russia

KIEV, Ukraine – Russian shelling of Ukraine’s Kherson region killed two people, local officials said, as the two countries traded drone strikes on each other on Saturday night.

Two other people were injured in the attack near the regional capital, said Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the partially occupied Kherson region.

In Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, an oil depot in Tsimlyansky district, deep in the region’s interior, was set on fire in the early hours of Saturday after a Ukrainian drone attacked, the latest long-range attack by Kyiv forces on a border region.

Ukraine has stepped up its air strikes on Russian soil in recent months, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to slow the Kremlin’s war machine. Moscow’s army is advancing hard along the front line in eastern Ukraine, where a shortage of troops and ammunition in the third year of war has left defenders vulnerable.

Rostov Region Governor Vasily Golubev said the drone strike caused a fire covering an area of ​​200 square meters, but there were no casualties. About five hours after reporting the fire on Telegram, Golubev said the fire had been extinguished.

In addition to the two drones intercepted over the Rostov region, Russian air defense systems destroyed two drones over the country’s western regions of Kursk and Belgorod overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian air defenses intercepted four of the five drones that Russia launched overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force announced on Saturday morning. Mykola Oleshuk, commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, said the fifth drone had left Ukrainian airspace in the direction of Belarus.

In addition, Vadym Filashkin, the Ukrainian governor of the partially occupied eastern Donetsk region, said on Saturday that six people were killed and 22 others injured in Russian attacks on Friday.

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