Seven people, three of them children, were killed when a Ukrainian drone crashed into a busy beach on the Black Sea, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said. Video footage captured by the BBC shows the drone hurtling towards a cliffside and bursting in a fireball as tourists watched from the shore.
The governor said 40 people were wounded, 17 of them hospitalised. He accused Ukraine of "a deliberate strike on civilians"—a claim Ukraine has not responded to, and both sides have denied that civilians were intentionally targeted.
What the drone was aiming for remains uncertain. Some Ukrainian Telegram channels claim the drone was jammed by electronic warfare, while Russian media reports gunfire just before the explosion, suggesting air defences may have fired.
The crash occurred near Arkhipo‑Osipovka, a Black Sea village famed for its warm climate and long stretch of beach that has become a holiday hotspot for Russians, especially as international travel is limited by sanctions. Local residents said no sirens sounded before the strike.
"We were sleeping on sunloungers and didn’t see where it exploded," said one holidaymaker. Another heard gunfire, describing it as a machine‑gun burst followed by an explosion, and a third told reporters that the scene had caused a nervous breakdown for her child.
Over the last year Ukraine has increased its long‑range attacks on deep Russian targets, hitting energy infrastructure and commercial warehouses. These strikes have occasionally caused civilian casualties—eight people were killed across various Russian cities over the weekend.
Russia has, since its full‑scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, attacked residential areas in Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians. Recent Ukrainian attacks have targeted the Wildberries distribution network, a major online retailer said to supply military needs. The latest strike on a Wildberries warehouse in the Vladimir region killed a family of ten in Kryvyi Rih the week before.
