Russian drone strikes Ukrainian Sumy, kills family

KYIV: Ukraine said on Tuesday that a Russian overnight drone strike had killed a family of four in the northeastern Sumy region. Oleg Grygorov, the head of the regional military administration, said Russian forces had hit a residential building in the village of Chernechchyna, in the Krasnopillia community. 'A couple with two young children lived in this house. Unfortunately, no one managed to escape,' Grygorov wrote on the Telegram platform. 'Rescuers (recovered) the bodies of four deceased people from under the rubble — parents and their sons, six and four years old,' he said. 'This is a terrible and irreparable loss for the entire community and the region.'
Russia's defence ministry said it had 'intercepted and destroyed' 81 Ukrainian drones overnight. The governor of Volgograd, Andrey Bocharov, said the Russian military had repelled a 'massive' Ukrainian drone attack over the southern region. 'According to preliminary information, there was no damage to structures or injuries,' Bocharov said.
On Sunday, a massive Russian drone and missile attack against Ukraine lasting 12 hours killed at least four people in the capital Kyiv, including a 12-year-old girl, and left dozens injured across the country. Ukraine said it had been targeted by 595 drones and 48 missiles that night, most of which were shot down by air defences. The fighting in Ukraine is essentially taking place in the east and Russia controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called up 135,000 men for routine military service, the country's biggest autumn conscription drive since 2016. Conscripts are expected to serve for a year at a military base inside Russia, not to fight in Ukraine, although there have been reports of conscripted men being sent to the front line. Since launching his full-scale military assault on Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has put Russia on a war footing, boosting military spending to levels unseen since the Soviet era and expanding the size of the army.

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic announced on Tuesday it is restricting the holders of Russian diplomatic and business passports from entering the country in what it said was an EU first, citing security concerns. The EU is pondering curbing the movement of Russian diplomats across the Schengen free travel area. Prague has long proposed restrictions on the movement of Russian diplomats following Moscow's attack of Ukraine in 2022.
'We have imposed an entry ban on the holders of Russian diplomatic and business passports at international airports,' Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told reporters. He added Russians with an accreditation issued by Prague would be allowed to enter, and that the measure does not concern diplomats at Moscow's embassy in the Czech capital.
Foreign ministry spokesman Daniel Drake said that the measure took 'immediate effect' and that Prague was the first within the EU to adopt the measure. Lipavsky told reporters his country would 'continue to push the proposal for pan-European, pan-Schengen restrictions'. He added the European measure would 'help resolve our security problem as (Russia's) diplomatic network conceals networks of agents who endanger our security here'.
The Czech intelligence service BIS said in its annual report for 2024 that 'Russia continued its efforts to rebuild broader espionage networks operating under diplomatic cover'. The Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member with a population of 10.9 million, has provided Ukraine with humanitarian and military aid since the Russian attack started.
Separately, Ukraine has sent a team of anti-drone warfare specialists to Denmark 'for exercises', President Volodymyr Zelensky said, as Copenhagen prepares to host European leaders amid a spate of alleged Russian airspace violations in Europe. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Polish soldiers would also head to Denmark to help secure the upcoming EU leaders meeting and European Political Community summit.
The violations include a massive drone incursion into Poland and fighter jets entering Estonia's airspace. Ukraine has faced nightly waves of Russian drone and missile attacks for much of the three-and-a-half-year war that Russia launched. 'Our group of specialists has begun deploying a mission in Denmark to share Ukraine's experience in countering drones,' Zelensky said in a post on social media, adding the team would participate in joint exercises with allies.
'Ukraine's experience is the most relevant in Europe today,' he said. 'And it is precisely our expertise, our specialists, and our technologies that can become a key element of future Europe's Drone Wall — a large-scale project that will guarantee security in the skies,' he added. Ukraine's air force says it downs more than 80 per cent of all incoming Russian drones — which regularly number several hundred a night. — AFP