Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered retaliation for a deadly attack by Ukraine on a university dormitory in an occupied town that authorities say killed at least 12 people.
On Friday, President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of a “terrorist act” after a Ukrainian military drone attacked a dormitory in Starobilsk, an occupied town in eastern Luhansk.
The Russian president added that he had instructed the Ministry of Defense to propose responses to the attack on Ukraine.
Russia’s state news agency TASS reported on Saturday that Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations had announced that the death toll had risen to 12 “children killed in Ukrainian drone strikes.” Nine people remain trapped under the rubble.
Ukraine’s military rejected Putin’s claims and accused Russian media of disseminating “manipulative information” about the attack. It reiterated that it would attack “military infrastructure and facilities used for military purposes.”
The Ukrainian military said in a statement that “one of the headquarters of the Rubicon forces in the Starobilsk region” was among the targets attacked early Friday.
The elite Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technology has been a pioneer in Russian drone technology and targeting since its establishment in 2024.
Ukraine has stepped up its long-range drone attacks in recent weeks. The report claimed two attacks on Russian military facilities in the occupied territories earlier this week.
The first wave of airstrikes hit a Russian drone operator training camp in the occupied town of Snizhne on Wednesday night, killing at least 65 cadets and one instructor, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said.
Robert Brobdy, commander of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Force, claimed that the attack targeted a 2,484 square meter complex housing drones, explosives and a command post.
Footage posted on social media on Wednesday night also showed buildings ablaze in Snizhne, which CNN geolocated in the same area as a drone training camp.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday claimed that around 100 Russians were killed or injured in an attack on the headquarters of Russian security services and air defense systems in occupied Ukraine’s Kherson region.
It is unusual for Ukraine to claim such a high number of casualties, and CNN cannot independently verify it. CNN has reached out to Russian authorities for comment.
Ukraine has developed an arsenal of medium- and long-range drones capable of deep strikes against Russia’s military and energy infrastructure.
President Zelenskiy said on Saturday that security forces had attacked “one of Russia’s key military-industrial enterprises” 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) inside Russia.
Zelenskiy said the target was a chemical factory in the Perm region that supplies various products to the Russian military. He posted a video purporting to show smoke billowing from the facility.
