MOSCOW: Russia said Thursday that it had repelled several Ukrainian drone and missile attacks in the west of the country, including in Volgograd where a fire broke out at a defence ministry site.

Volgograd region Governor Andrey Bocharov said Russian air defences repelled a drone attack in the area of Marinovka and that “most of the drones were destroyed”.

Following the crash of one of these devices, “a fire broke out on the territory of a Ministry of Defence facility” before being extinguished with no casualties, he said on Telegram.

In the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, “two Ukrainian missiles and a drone were destroyed by Russia’s air defences, according to Aleksei Smirnov, governor of the region.

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And further south, in the Rostov region, an attack using five drones was “repelled”, according to governor Vasily Golubev.

Drones were also destroyed in the Voronezh and Bryansk regions, according to their local governors on Thursday morning.

Russia on Wednesday foiled an attempt by a group of Ukrainian fighters to cross the border into its western Bryansk region, which neighbours Kursk.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Ukraine fired 11 drones at Moscow that Russia said were shot down during one of the largest strikes against the capital.

Earlier this month, the Ukrainian army claimed to have struck a Russian military airfield in the Lipetsk region, some 280 kilometres (175 miles) from the border, in an overnight strike that destroyed ammunition warehouses.

Two and a half years into Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, Kyiv seized back the initiative by sending troops into the western Kursk region on August 6.

Ukraine says it has captured dozens of towns and villages in the region and Russia says more than 120,000 civilians have had to flee the area.