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Russia says its air defenses shot down six Ukrainian drones over two western and southern regions, the latest in a string of drone and missile attacks that have targeted Russian locations.
The Defense Ministry said one drone was brought down in the southern Krasnodar region around dawn on October 1, and five more were shot down over the western Smolensk region in the following hours.
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No casualties were reported and it was unclear if there was any damage on the ground. Ukraine, which has rarely claimed official responsibility for drone or missile attacks on Russian targets, had no comment.
Russia, meanwhile, launched nearly three dozen drones at targets across Ukraine overnight, and the Ukrainian military said more than half were downed by air defenses.
At least five people were injured in the attacks, mainly in Kherson, a southern region that Ukrainian troops partially recaptured from Russia last year.
One person was injured in the Cherkasy region as well, regional Governor Ihor Taburets said.
“Overnight, the enemy massively attacked our Cherkasy region with attack drones. Unfortunately, there were hits on industrial infrastructure in Uman,” Taburets said in a post to Telegram. “As a result, fires broke out in warehouses; in particular, where grain was stored.”
The city of Kryviy Rih was also hit, damaging electricity and gas lines, according to local authorities.
In Washington, congressional lawmakers stripped out a package of new funding for Ukraine as they passed a last-minute, stopgap measure to keep the U.S. government open and operating.
Acting just hours before a midnight deadline when the federal government would have to shut down, lawmakers voted to send a temporary funding measure to President Joe Biden for his signature, which he did shortly after.
Support for continued funding for Ukraine has wide bipartisan support. But a growing number of House Republican lawmakers oppose such efforts, and the issue of a new $24 billion White House request was a key point of Republican opposition in the negotiations over funding the government.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Congress has approved about $113 billion in weaponry, equipment, humanitarian aid, and economic assistance for Ukraine.
The stopgap measure lasts until November 17, by which time U.S. lawmakers will have to agree on another spending package or the U.S. government will shut down.
In a statement accompanying his signing of the legislation, Biden said he “expected” the Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, to “keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.”
The Senate’s Democratic and Republican leaders, meanwhile, also signaled that the question of a new package of Ukraine aid would be revisited in the coming weeks.
“We support Ukraine’s efforts to defend its sovereignty against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s brazen aggression, and we join a strong bipartisan majority of our colleagues in this essential work,” they said in a statement.
Britain’s new defense secretary said London was considering stepping up its instruction of Ukrainian soldiers by sending British trainers to Ukraine itself.
In an interview published October 1 by The Telegraph, Grant Shapps said he had spoken with top military officers about moving “more training” into Ukraine and he called on British defense firms to set up manufacturing facilities inside the country.
More than 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers have received training from Britian since the start of 2022.
Britain might also play a more active naval role in the Black Sea, where Russia has targeted Ukrainian cargo ships, Schapps said.
Dmitry Medvedev, the bombastic former Russian president who is now a top official on the country’s Security Council, said that British trainers would be legitimate military targets if they traveled to Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops.
London is “perfectly aware that they’ll be eliminated mercilessly, and not as mercenaries this time around, but precisely as British NATO specialists,” Medvedev wrote in a post on Telegram.
With reporting by Reuters
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