Ukraine says 31 drones downed in 'massive' attack

The Ukrainian military on Thursday said that Russia had launched a "massive" drone attack overnight and that it had destroyed 31 out of the 39 aircraft.

Russian unmanned aerial vehicles were intercepted over Black Sea coastal regions and further inland, said Nataliya Gumenyuk, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian southern military command.

Russia "does not stop the pressure and searching for new tactics: namely, with the use of mass attacks", Gumenyuk said on the messaging platform Telegram.

"Tonight, several groups of strike UAVs were launched... air defence worked along almost the entire southern direction -- in Odesa, Mykolaiv regions. Also, much higher north -- the enemy aimed its attacks on central Ukraine," she said, adding that Ukraine was still assessing the damage.

The Ukrainian General Staff said in its daily update that the attack involved "39 attack UAVs of the Shahed-136/131 type" and that air defences had destroyed 31 of them.

Since July, when Moscow pulled out of a UN-brokered deal allowing safe grain shipments via the Black Sea, Russia has ramped up attacks on Ukraine's grain-exporting infrastructure in the southern Odesa and Mykolaiv regions.

Meanwhile Sergiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said that Russian forces "directed almost 20 shells" at the Nikopol district overnight, with no injuries or casualties reported.