Seven people were killed and more than 50 were injured in Ukraine overnight after Russian missiles and drones targeted communities across the eastern half of the country.

A new drone bomber may have joined Ukraine’s escalating assault on Russia’s oil industry. On Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, drones operated by the Ukrainian 14th Separate Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Regiment struck a pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline along the Russian-Belarusian border in Bryansk Oblast.

Drone strikes were reported across multiple Russian regions, including Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk, Tver, and Bryansk, igniting fires and triggering air defence responses. While there were no reported casualties, an oil refinery in the city of Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod, suffered significant damage.

Ukraine said on Friday it had struck a Russian oil refinery and a microchip factory in a huge drone attack that caused fires at the refinery's production facilities and an oil pumping station.

Competing claims have emerged over a deadly attack on a boarding school in Sudzha, a city in Russia’s Kursk region, that Ukraine has controlled for five months.View on euronews

An 18-year-old British volunteer fighting for Ukraine was killed by a Russian drone just minutes into his first frontline mission, The Sun has reported. James Wilton, from Huddersfield, had no prior military experience and travelled to Ukraine aged 17 to join the fight against Russian forces.