A Russian helicopter with three crew members and 19 passengers on board has gone missing in the far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka, the Interfax news agency reported on Saturday.
The Mi-8T helicopter took off from a base near the Vachkazhets volcano and the crew failed to report at the scheduled time. This report came as Ukrainian air defences shot down 24 out of 52 drones launched by Russia during overnight attacks on eight regions across Ukraine.
In a statement on Telegram, the Ukrainian air force said that 25 Shahed drones had fallen on their own and three others had flown towards Russia and Belarus. Ukraine uses electronic warfare as well as mobile hunting groups and aircraft defences to repel frequent Russian drone and missile strikes.
“On the night of August 31, 2024, the enemy struck with an Iskander-M ballistic missile from the Voronezh region, four S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles from the occupied Donetsk region, and 52 Shahed-131/136 attack UAVs from the Kursk region," the Ukrainian air force said in a statement posted on Facebook. “As a result of the air battle, 24 Shahed-131/136 attack UAVs were shot down, 25 were lost (they fell on their own)," the statement added.
In the capital Kyiv, where alerts lasted for about four hours, it was the fourth drone attack this week, officials said. All drones targeting the city were downed and no major damage was reported, Kyiv city officials said. Ukrainian air defences also shot down Russian drones in the Poltava, Cherkasy, Kyrovohrad and Dnipropetrovsk regions in central Ukraine, in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions in the north and the Mykolayiv region in the south.
Meanwhile, in the southwestern Russian city of Belgorod, local Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported that five people were killed and 46 injured in a Ukrainian attack late on Friday. Gladkov said that 37 of the injured, including seven children, were taken to hospital.
A video from a car dashboard, posted on social media and purporting to show the attack, displayed another car being blown up while moving on the road. Seconds later, an explosion is seen on the other side of the road. Ukraine has staged frequent attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions in recent months, with the city being a focal point of these attacks.
(With agency inputs)
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