Ukraine downs 34 Russian drones launched overnight — air force

Ukrainian air defences downed 34 out of 81 drones launched by Russia overnight, the air force said.

It said on Saturday that 47 drones were "lost", in reference to Ukraine's use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones.

Earlier, three missiles hit a residential area near the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, killing one person, injuring five others and destroying two houses, they said.

A picture posted by the regional governor showed the shattered facade of a private home.

Five people were injured in a drone attack in the neighbouring Kiev region and four were hurt when the town of Sloviansk was shelled near the front line in the Donetsk region, officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said that in the first three days of 2025, Russia had launched 300 attack drones and nearly 20 missiles on Ukrainian targets.

Most, he said, had been downed or intercepted.

Strike on a Russian command post

In southern Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces hold swathes of territory five months after a mass incursion, a man walking down a road was killed in a drone strike, the regional governor said.

The Ukrainian military said on Thursday it had carried out a high-precision strike on a Russian command post in the Kursk region.

Russia's military said it had downed four Ukrainian missiles. Russia says it has recaptured much of the territory seized by Ukrainian forces after they poured over the border into the Kursk region in August.

The governor of Russia's Bryansk region, to the west, said a village near the border came under mortar fire, and one resident was killed.

Russia's military and local officials reported that defence systems had downed about 10 Ukrainian drones, including six in the Bryansk region.