ISTANBUL

At least one person was killed and three were injured in Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia’s Kursk and Oryol regions on Tuesday.

“This afternoon, the village of Gornal, Sudzhansky district, was attacked from the Ukrainian side. A woman died from shrapnel (wounds),” Kursk Governor Roman Starovoyt said in a statement on Telegram.

Starovoyt further said that two houses were damaged in the village due to the attack.

Oryol Governor Andrey Klychkov said on Telegram that two downed drones in the region’s administrative capital crashed onto a fuel and energy complex facility, adding that a fire that emerged as a result of the crash was contained.

In a later statement, Klychkov said: “During an attack by enemy drones on the facilities of the fuel and energy complex of the Oryol region, three people were injured and received moderate injuries.”

In an initial statement, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that air defense systems in the country downed six Ukrainian drones at 3 p.m. Moscow time (1200GMT) over the Kursk and Oryol regions.

It later said that another drone attack took place half an hour later in the Kursk and Oryol regions and that defense systems destroyed one drone and intercepted another.

Ukrainian officials have not yet commented on the drone attacks.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have exchanged accusations over airstrikes against each other that intensified since late December, when at least 40 people were killed in various regions of Ukraine in a massive air attack, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as the "heaviest attack" since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

On Jan. 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country will not let “a single crime of this kind” go unpunished following a subsequent raid on the Russian city of Belgorod, which killed 25 people and wounded many others.