BELGOROD – A man died in the Grayvoronsky district over the past day, and eight other people were hurt in three border districts, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Friday. Four of the wounded are in hospital as inpatients, Governor Alexander Shuvayev said on the Max messaging app, according to RIA Novosti.
“Unfortunately, a man was killed during a Ukrainian attack in the Grayvoronsky district,” Shuvayev wrote, adding condolences to the man’s family and friends. The injured were in the Borisovsky, Grayvoronsky and Shebekinsky districts. The governor did not give names or ages, and did not say how the man was killed.
Shuvayev put the scale of the past 24 hours at 119 attacks with artillery and bomb-laden drones, and said air defences downed or electronically suppressed 146 Ukrainian drones. Those figures come from the Russian regional government alone. The reports reviewed carried no response from Kyiv and no independent count. The Eastern Herald reported in July that Russian air defence intercepted 71 Ukrainian drones in a single night over Belgorod, Bryansk and Crimea.
The toll fits a pattern that has not let up. A day earlier, the regional crisis response center said, according to RIA Novosti, that an FPV drone struck a truck on the Golovchino-Borisovka highway and the driver died at the scene, while a motorcyclist was hurt in a separate drone attack. Rodion Miroshnik, a Russian Foreign Ministry ambassador-at-large, told TASS on October 20 that Ukrainian forces attacked Belgorod about 1,300 times in the past week, killing four civilians and wounding 55. Those are Russian government figures too. Reuters reported on October 8 that two people were killed in drone strikes in the region. In August, Shuvayev counted 94 attacks and four deaths, including a child, in one 24-hour period.
The governor is relatively new to the post. Vladimir Putin made him acting governor in May after Vyacheslav Gladkov resigned, according to the Kremlin, and he was sworn in on October 2, Vedomosti reported. The border region has been one of the most frequent targets of Ukrainian fire since the Russian operation began, and the numbers now arrive almost daily. The Eastern Herald reported on August 17 that six people were killed in an overnight drone offensive that also struck Wildberries warehouses. What remains unclear is whether the Friday figures reflect a new escalation or the region’s new baseline.
