Ex-Russian lawmaker hurt in Russian drone attack outside Kyiv, Ukrainian reports say

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine said on Thursday it had repelled a Russian drone attack on the region outside Kyiv overnight, but that debris injured two people identified in a Ukrainian media report as a former Russian lawmaker turned Kremlin critic and his wife.

Former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, who has lived in Ukraine for years and holds Ukrainian citizenship, wrote on X that Thursday felt like his “second birthday” and that he would elaborate later.

The Ukrainska Pravda outlet cited sources saying that drone fragments had damaged his home, injuring him and his wife. The Obozrevatel news site published a picture of Ponomaryov looking into a camera, his face and upper chest spattered with blood.

Ponomaryov did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kyiv’s regional authorities said the drone strike was the second on the area in as many nights. Two privately-held residential buildings were damaged, but there were no direct hits to residential or critical infrastructure, it said.

The air force said it had shot down all seven Shahed-type drones used for the attack.

On Wednesday, Ukraine said Russia used 87 drones in one of its largest such attacks of the war to date. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The governor of the central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said the air force had also shot down one drone there and no casualties were reported.

Russia also launched Iskander-M ballistic missiles at the battered northeastern region of Kharkiv overnight, injuring one more person, its governor said.

Ukraine’s national railways Ukrzaliznytsia said the Russian missile attack on the region damaged its tracks and power supply facilities, in addition to two locomotives, freight and passenger cars.

(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko; editing by Tom Balmforth and Miral Fahmy)