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• Moscow downs over 230 drones • Pro-Kremlin ex-MP killed in Spain
KYIV/MOSCOW: A Russian strike on a military training site in northeastern Ukraine has killed six soldiers and wounded at least 10 others, the Ukrainian national guard said on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s Sumy border region — from where Kyiv’s troops launched last year’s major cross-border offensive into Russia’s Kursk region — has come under intensifying attacks in recent months after Moscow recaptured its territory.
“Six soldiers were killed and more than 10 wounded as a result of the attack, while they carried out exercises at a military shooting range,” Ukraine’s national guard said in a Facebook post. Russia’s defence ministry had on Tuesday evening said it had launched a ballistic missile attack on the site.
“During reconnaissance activities ... a training camp” for Ukranian special forces was “detected,” it said in a social media post. “Based on the received coordinates, an Iskander missile strike was launched.”
Drones ‘intercepted’
Russia said on Wednesday that its air defences had shot down at least 232 Ukrainian drones over various Russian regions, including some approaching Moscow where the capital’s airports were briefly shut down to ensure the safety of flights.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said three drones had been downed en route to the capital where three major airports briefly stopped flights before resuming operations.
There were no reports of casualties, but Ukraine’s military said that its drones had hit the Bolkhovsky Semiconductor Devices Plant , a semiconductor devices plant in the Oryol region that it said supplied Russian fighter jet and missile producers.
The war in Ukraine, which has left hundreds of thousands of people dead, has become a crucible of drone innovation with both sides fielding swarms of drones far behind the front lines in an attempt to disrupt production facilities.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces were advancing at key points along the front and pro-Russian war bloggers said Russia had pierced the Ukrainian lines between Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday visited the western Kursk region for the first time since Russian forces ejected Ukrainian troops from the area last month.
Ex-Ukraine MP killed
A US-sanctioned Ukrainian ex-MP and senior aide to the country’s former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was shot dead near Madrid on Wednesday, a Spanish police source said.
Officers rushed to the scene in the upmarket town of Pozuelo de Alarcon where several people shot a man in the back and head as he prepared to climb into a vehicle, the source said, confirming the deceased person was Andriy Portnov.
The shooters then fled from the scene towards a wooded area, the source added, saying the violence took place outside an American private school at around 9:15am.
Madrid emergency services found a man sprawled on the pavement near the school with fatal wounds caused by at least three gunshot wounds, spokeswoman Encarna Fernandez told reporters at the scene.
Spanish media reported the victim had just dropped off his children at the school before he was killed.
Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2025
