Russia and Ukraine trade blame after overnight strikes leave nine dead

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of carrying out overnight airstrikes that left nine people dead, according to Turkish news agency Anadolu, as the war showed no sign of slowing heading into Wednesday.

Russian officials said their air defenses downed 311 Ukrainian drones overnight and that Russian forces struck facilities linked to Ukraine's military-industrial complex across several regions. Moscow has regularly described such strikes as targeting military production and logistics sites rather than civilian infrastructure, a characterization Kyiv disputes.

Ukrainian officials, for their part, blamed Russia for strikes that caused the reported deaths, continuing a pattern in which both governments present competing accounts of the same exchanges of fire. Independent verification of casualty figures and strike targets from either side was not immediately available.

The overnight exchange adds to a conflict now in its fourth year, with both sides continuing long-range drone and missile campaigns against targets they each describe as military in nature.

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv has provided a full, independently verified account of the overnight events, and the competing claims could not immediately be reconciled.