Ukrainian air defense forces shot down 13 Russian-launched Shahed drones overnight, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk, said today.

"The enemy attacked with 13 Shahed-131/136 attack unmanned aerial vehicles and four S-300 guided anti-aircraft missiles. All launches were carried out from the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation," the Ukrainian officer said in a message on Telegram.

As a result of combat operations, the Air Force's anti-aircraft missile units and the Ukrainian Defense Forces' mobile firing groups destroyed 13 attack drones in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, he added.

The head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, Oleg Sinegubov, said in a message on Telegram that four people were injured in the attack.

"As a result of the impact of the wreckage [of the drones], fires broke out in a two-story office building and warehouses, as well as a tire repair shop. Four people were injured," he said.

In turn, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, Sergei Lisak, reported that air defense forces managed to shoot down five Shahed drones over the Pavlograd district overnight, although critical infrastructure and three houses were damaged, one of which caught fire.

"A man and a woman were injured. Both are hospitalized in moderate condition," he reported on Telegram.

During Friday afternoon and evening, the Russians attacked the Nikopol district five times with heavy artillery, Grad multiple rocket launchers and a kamikaze drone, with no injuries but damage to several buildings, a power line and critical infrastructure, Lisak added.

Also today, Russia claimed that its air defenses shot down four long-range ATACMS missiles over the annexed Crimean peninsula last night.

The information was released by the Russian Defense Ministry, which did not report any casualties or damage as a result of the attack.

This was the second time this week that Russia reported shooting down ATACMS missiles.

In March, US President Joe Biden secretly sent long-range ATACMS missiles (300 kilometers) to Ukraine, which Kiev had been demanding for months and which Washington had resisted delivering, the White House confirmed.

In a note released today on the conflict in Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense suggests that Russia has just adapted its strategy for the conflict in Ukraine to a war of attrition, after estimating that the number of Russian casualties has risen again in recent weeks.

The British Ministry of Defense estimates that the average number of casualties among Russian forces, including dead and wounded, in April was 899 per day, rising after a "slight slowdown in Moscow's operations" following its capture of the strategic town of Avdiivka in February of this year.

According to London, the total number of Russian casualties since the beginning of the conflict now stands at around 465,000.

Consequently, "it is likely that, despite the extreme cost of living, Russia has already fully adapted its army to a war of attrition that is based on human mass, rather than quality"; a strategy that "will almost certainly continue throughout the war and will have long-term effects on the future Russian Army".

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