Russian-made drone crashes in Croatia as Ukraine’s west is attacked for first time
An out-of-control drone rocketed over Romania and Hungary to crash land in Croatia as Russia launched air strikes in the west of Ukraine for the first time.
More than 1,500 kilometres west of Kyiv, a Russian-made drone crashed in the Croatian capital Zagreb and damaged several vehicles.
It came as Russia opened a new battleground in Ukraine’s west for the first time and increased its bombardment of civilian targets in the east.
Croatia, across the Mediterranean’s Adriatic Sea from Italy, is far from the front line but was the crash site of the drone that originated from the direction of Ukraine through Hungarian and Romanian airspace.
Several parked vehicles were damaged, but no one was hurt, the interior ministry said in a statement earlier Friday.
While Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said it was unclear which of the war’s combatants owned the Russian-made military drone, the flight path suggests it came from the direction of the southwest of Ukraine.
The Russian offensive arrived in the southwest and northwest of Ukraine for the first time with air strikes in the cities of Ivano-Frankiivsk and Lutsk.
Military aviation experts quoted by local media said the crashed drone could have been a Soviet-era Tu-141 reconnaissance vehicle used by Ukraine.
Plenkovic added the cause of the incident had not yet been determined but said the drone flew over Croatia for a few minutes before crashing.
“At this moment we do not know exactly whether it was owned by the Russian or Ukrainian army,” Plenkovic added to Croatian reporters in Versailles.
Airports came under rocket attack overnight near Lutsk, in the northwest near the borders of Poland and Belarus, and Ivano-Frankiivsk, in the southwest near the borders of Slovakia and Romania.
Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and six injured, in the air strike on Lutsk’s military airport, according to the head of the regional council Yurii Pohuliaiko.
The mayor of Ivano-Frankiivsk, Ruslan Martsinkiv, ordered residents into bomb shelters as explosions were heard ring out across the city.
The move west to regions north and south of Lviv marks a major advance in the front line as Russian forces attempt to encircle Kyiv.
Civilian targets in the east of Ukraine, meanwhile, came under increasing bombardment as Russian forces closed the noose around encircled cities.
In Izyum, Russian air strikes hit a psychiatric hospital and care facility for the disabled with 330 people in the building at the time of the attack, including 10 who required wheelchairs and 50 with reduced mobility.
Oleh Synegubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said 73 were evacuated in the “brutal attack on civilians”.
In Mariupol, at least three people including a six-year-old were reported to have been killed and 17 injured in an attack on a maternity and children’s hospital
In Dnipro, air strikes hit three civilian buildings in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, destroying a shoe factory and killing one security guard.
Three missiles hit an apartment building, a migration office and a council administration building in the Novokodatsky district, setting fire to the factory.
Officials said the strikes hit near a children’s school and that there were no military facilities in the area.
The UN has counted 26 attacks on Ukrainian health centres since the start of the Russian invasion, leaving 12 dead and 34 injured.
In total, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Friday the war has killed 564 civilians, including 41 children.
– with AFP
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