Ukraine has pounded Russia’s Kursk region with dozens of drones, killing an elderly woman, injuring nine people and sparking fires, Russian authorities have said.
Over 100 drones were shot down over the region where Ukrainian forces have been locked in a grinding conflict, the Russian defence ministry claimed on Tuesday.
"Kursk has been subjected to a massive enemy attack overnight," the Kursk region administration said in a post on Telegram messaging app.
"Unfortunately, an 85-year-old woman died."
A multi-storey apartment building was damaged by the drone attack, with several flats catching fire, acting mayor of Kursk, Sergei Kotlyarov said on Telegram.
Residents have been evacuated to a nearby school, he added.
The region's administration posted photos of a multi-storey apartment building with blown-out windows and fire damage to the facade. Drones also hit an ambulance garage, damaging 11 cars, it said.
Three people were killed in the region as a result of a Ukrainian drone attack, officials also said on Monday evening.
The reports are yet to be independently verified and there has been no immediate comment from Ukraine.
The attack follows a devastating Russian missile and bomb attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy over the weekend that killed 35 people and injured at least 119.
Following the deadly strike, US President Donald Trump joined world leaders in calling the attack “terrible” but then appeared to later blame his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, for starting the war in Ukraine.
Asked about Mr Zelensky during a meeting with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, Trump said: "When you start a war, you've got to know you can win the war.
"You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size. And then hope that people give you some missiles."
He also told reporters: "If Biden were competent, and if Zelensky were competent, and I don't know that he is...
"There was no way that war should never have been allowed to happen."
He added: "Biden could have stopped it, and Zelensky could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it."
Meanwhile, Zelensky has urged Trump to visit Ukraine and witness first hand the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the "bloodbath" of the three-year war in Ukraine, though a deal has yet to be agreed.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that it was not easy to agree with the US on the key parts of a possible peace deal to end the war and that Russia would never again allow itself to depend economically on the West.
Both Ukraine and Russia have denied targeting civilians since Russia first launched its full-scale invasion on Ukraine more than three years ago.
But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
Kursk and other Russian regions on the border with Ukraine have been subject to frequent air and land attacks by Kyiv forces who say their goal is to undermine Moscow's overall war efforts.
Ukrainian troops last year staged a cross-border incursion into the Kursk region of which the city of Kursk is the administrative centre.
Ukrainian forces still remain in parts of the region, although Russian forces have recaptured much lost territory.
Russia currently controls a little under one-fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and parts of four other regions Moscow now claims are part of Russia - a claim not recognised by most countries.
