Ukraine carried out a wide-ranging drone attack overnight on energy facilities in nine regions of Russia, including a nuclear power plant in the western Smolensk region, according to Russian officials.
“Civilian sites in various districts of the Smolensk region are under a massive drone attack,” regional governor Vasily Anokhin said in remarks cited by Russia’s TASS news agency in the early hours of Jan. 29.
“Air defenses and electronic warfare units are eliminating them.”
He said no casualties or material damage had yet been reported.
Anokhin went on to assert that at least one drone was downed “while trying to attack a nuclear power-generation site.”
Russia’s Smolensk region, which shares a border with Belarus, is home to a large nuclear power plant that is said to be one of the country’s largest power-generating facilities.
In a subsequent statement cited by TASS, the nuclear plant’s press service said that operations at the facility had not been affected.
“We are working as usual,” the statement reads, noting that the Smolensk nuclear plant contained two “active reactors.”
A third reactor has been undergoing repairs for the past two weeks, according to the statement.
Russia’s defense ministry later claimed that a total of 11 Ukrainian drones had been downed by air defenses in the skies over Smolensk.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify the claims, and Kyiv has not yet acknowledged its role in the reported attack.
9 Regions Targeted
According to Moscow, more than 100 drones have been shot down in nine regions of Russia over the past 24 hours.Almost half were downed in the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces remain in control of a thin strip of territory, Russia’s defense ministry said.
Drones were also shot down in the Belgorod, Bryansk, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga, Rostov, and Leningrad regions, the ministry stated.
In Belgorod, a frequent target of Ukrainian missiles and drones, a mother and child were killed by falling debris, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging platform.
In an earlier Telegram post, Gladkov had said that a residential building in Belgorod—and several vehicles—had been damaged by bomb-laden drones.
Russian petrochemicals company Sibur said in a statement that operations had been temporarily halted at the plant, which is located some 500 miles from the Ukrainian border.
No deaths or injuries were reported among employees, the company said, adding that emergency services remained active at the site.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has stepped up attacks on energy facilities inside Russian territory, typically using missiles and drones.
According to Kyiv, such facilities play a key role in fueling Russia’s ongoing invasion of eastern Ukraine, which is set to enter its third year next month.
Russia launches frequent strikes on energy infrastructure inside Ukraine—also with missiles and drones—likewise claiming such sites serve a military function.
Both sides claim to use precision weapons in their attacks to avoid civilian casualties.
On Jan. 24, Kyiv launched a similar aerial attack with more than 120 drones against targets in 13 regions of Russia.
At the time, Ukraine’s military claimed its drones had succeeded in striking an oil refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region and a microelectronics plant in Bryansk.
TASS later reported that operations at the refinery had been halted but that nobody had been injured or killed as a result of the attack.
