🔴 Live: Russia and Ukraine trade drone attacks

Issued on: 24/08/2023 – 06:11Modified: 24/08/2023 – 06:44

2 min

6:44am: Air strike injures seven people in Ukraine’s Dnipro

An early morning missile strike injured seven people in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region Serhiy Lisak said on Thursday.

Three men and four women were among the wounded, he said.

6:05am: Russia says it downed three Ukrainian drones over Russian regions

The Russian Defence Ministry said early on Thursday air defence systems had shot down three Ukrainian drones over Russian regions.

Two drones were downed over the Bryansk region that borders Ukraine and one more – over the Kaluga region that is closer to Moscow.

5:45am: Ukraine says Russia lost two bombers in attacks on airfields – Radio Liberty

Ukraine’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said recent attacks on Russian airfields had destroyed two TU-22 bombers and damaged two more bombers.

“Two were destroyed, two were damaged. Two can not be repaired,” Budanov said in a TV interview on Wednesday night for the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

He said a fifth Russian aircarft could have been hit.

Russian officials reported drone attacks on military airfields Soltsy in the Novgorod region on Saturday and Shaykovka in the Kaluga region on Monday and said that one warplane was damaged during the first attack.

10:46pm: Prigozhin ‘a murderer’ who ‘won’t be missed’, says Belarussian opposition head

Exiled Belarusian opposition chief Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said no Belarusian would miss Wagner chief Prigozhin, who is feared dead in a plane crash.

Some Wagner fighters moved to Belarus after their short-lived mutiny in Russia.

“The criminal Prigozhin won’t be missed in Belarus. He was a murderer and should be remembered as such. His death might dismantle Wagner’s presence in Belarus, reducing the threat to our nation and neighbours,” Tikhanovskaya said on social media.

10:21pm: Prigozhin on board crashed plane, says Russia’s aviation authority

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner group commander Dmitry Utkin were among 10 people on board a plane involved in a fatal crash north of Moscow on Wednesday, Russian civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia said.

Rosaviatsia published the names of seven passengers, including Prigozhin and Utkin, and three crew members it said had been on board.

9:53pm: ‘I would not at all be surprised if US intelligence foresaw something like this’

FRANCE 24 discusses the US’s response to Prigozhin’s possible death with the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief David Smith. 

“The US has often been ahead of the game on this … I would not at all be surprised if US intelligence foresaw something like this,” says Smith.

Read yesterday’s liveblog to see how the day’s events unfolded.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)