Two people were killed, eight were wounded and six are missing after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment block in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa on Saturday, authorities said.
“Russia continues to fight civilians ... one of the enemy drones hit a residential building in Odessa. 18 apartments were destroyed,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Telegram post. He said a child was injured in the strike.
A video posted by Mr Zelenskiy showed an apartment building with a chunk several storeys tall ripped out of it, and dozens of rescuers scrambling to cut through a sea of rubble on the ground.
According to Mr Zelenskiy, the drone was a Shahed, a large, winged kamikaze drone supplied by Iran. Russia has launched several thousand of these throughout the war at targets deep inside Ukraine.
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Posting on X, the Ukraine president made a further plea for military support to “effectively protect our people from Russian terror”.
In Russia, two buildings were damaged and people were evacuated in St Petersburg on Saturday morning after local residents reported a loud explosion that blew out windows.
St Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov said “an incident” had taken place in the city’s northeastern district of Krasnogvardeyskiy.
There were no casualties, but residents were evacuated from their apartments, Mr Beglov said, without explaining the cause of the incident or its nature.
Reuters video taken at the scene showed a damaged facade of a building with blown-out windows, damaged balconies and shattered glass and debris on the ground.
Russian media outlets reported that the incident could have been caused by a downed Ukrainian drone, which was heading towards a nearby fuel depot. There was no official confirmation of this from Russia authorities or state media.
Meanwhile, Germany is investigating an audio recording published in Russian media reported to be a conference call of high-ranking German military officials talking about weapons for Ukraine, sparking concerns of espionage in Germany and calls for clarification from Russia.
A German defence ministry spokesperson said on Saturday that it couldn’t confirm the authenticity of the recording, but the Federal Office for Military Counterintelligence Service was investigating the matter and all necessary steps would be taken.
Margarita Simonyan, a Russian state TV journalist and the head of Russia Today, was the first to publish the audio on Friday, which was also posted on her Telegram channel.
Reuters listened to the 38-minute recording but could not independently confirm its authenticity.
Participants in the call discuss the possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz has publicly so far firmly rejected. They also talk about the training of Ukrainian soldiers, and possible military targets.
Russia’s embassy in Berlin didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on Saturday about allegations of possible spying. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on social media on Friday: “We demand an explanation from Germany.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke to journalists on Saturday of “cunning plans of the Bundeswehr (German armed forces), which became apparent due to the publication of this audio recording. This is a blatant self-exposure”, Lavrov said.
Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the German parliament, told the Handelsblatt newspaper that he considered the reports to be authentic.
“Russia is of course showing how heavily it uses espionage and sabotage as part of the hybrid war. It is to be expected that much more was intercepted and leaked in order to influence decisions, discredit and manipulate people,” he was quoted as saying. – Agencies