A drone strike on an apartment complex in the southwestern city of Belgorod last week was likely carried out by Russian forces, according to a visual investigation by the independent news outlet Pepel.
At least two people were injured and several apartments and cars were damaged in the attack last Tuesday. Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said at the time that Ukrainian forces were behind the drone strike.
But security footage reviewed by Pepel shows the unmanned aircraft that struck into the apartment as resembling an Iranian-designed Shahed drone — a “loitering munition” widely used by the Russian military to strike targets in Ukraine.
“Only this combat drone has a distinctive nose and triangular wings with blunt ends, which are clearly visible in the surveillance video,” Pepel wrote.
In addition, Pepel said eyewitnesses in Belgorod and authorities in neighboring Ukraine’s Kharkiv region reported overflights of Shahed drones before and after the strike on the Novaya Zhizn residential neighborhood where the attack occurred.
The outlet said it geolocated the drone’s flight path as having come from inside Russia and directed toward Ukraine. Pepel suggested an error in the drone’s target selection system may have caused it to crash into the apartment.
The Moscow Times could not independently verify Pepel’s report.
The Belgorod region has regularly faced cross-border attacks since President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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