Reuters
Vladimir Putin has vowed retaliation after accusing Ukraine of carrying out a deadly attack on a student dormitory in an occupied part of eastern Ukraine.
Ten people were killed and 38 others injured in the nighttime strike in the town of Starobilsk in the Luhansk region, the Russian-backed local governor said. Eleven other people are still missing, he said.
The Ukrainian military said it struck the headquarters of Russia’s elite Rubicon drone military unit in Starobilsk. She did not specify whether it was the same building as that identified by Russia.
But Putin said there were “no military installations, intelligence facilities or related services nearby.”
“Therefore, there is absolutely no basis for asserting that the munitions hit the building because of our air defense or electronic warfare systems,” he said Friday at a reception at his Kremlin residence in Moscow.
He ordered the Russian military to prepare “proposals” on how to respond.
The Russian leader said the Ukrainian strike was carried out in three waves using 16 drones.
Russian state television showed what it said was one of the injured students, identifying her as 19-year-old Diana Shovkun.
She suffered a head injury after being struck by a collapsing concrete slab, according to the report.
No photos or videos of those Moscow says were killed were shown.
Early Saturday, Russian officials said two people were injured after falling drone debris sparked a fire at an oil depot in the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The headquarters of the southern region of Krasnodar reported that “several technical and administrative buildings caught fire” and that drone fragments fell on a fuel terminal.
Two people were injured and treated in hospital, the headquarters said. No deaths have been reported.
The headquarters said drones also damaged private homes in the port city of Anapa further north.
The Ukrainian military announced Friday evening that a nighttime strike had targeted the Rubicon headquarters in Starobilsk. He accuses fighters of the special drone unit of regularly striking civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
The statement also said that Ukrainian forces “cause damage to military infrastructure and facilities used for military purposes, strictly respecting the norms of international humanitarian law, laws and customs of war.”
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the headquarters of Russia’s FSB security service had been hit in the Moscow-controlled area of southern Ukraine’s Kherson region.
Around a hundred Russian “occupiers” were killed or injured, he added.
Moscow’s military has not commented on the matter, but a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel reported “casualties” after what it described as a “massive drone strike.”
Ukraine has repeatedly accused the Russian military of deliberately targeting civilians since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022 – an accusation that Moscow regularly denies.
