Russian officer ‘blown up by drone while mowing lawn on his day off’

Alexei Chernykh is reportedly dead (Picture: MVD Belgorod)

A Russian officer has been blown up on his day off work while he was mowing his lawn near Ukraine’s border, according to reports.

Alexei Chernykh, deputy chief of a local branch of the anti-corruption police, was supposedly blown up in the village of Schetinovka on Sunday.

The village comes under frequent drone strikes because of its proximity to Ukraine which has stepped up its cross-border attacks.

Telegram channel Baza confirmed a drone dropped a bomb onto Chernykh’s property.

‘A Ukrainian drone dropped ammunition on his site in Shchetynovka,’ the Telegram channel reported. ‘At that moment, Alexey was on his day off and was mowing [his] lawn,’ it added, saying that he was killed in the incident.

According to information on his social media account, Chernykh was blasted just before his 40th birthday which he would have celebrated today.

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has accused Ukraine of being behind the drone strike which he says killed a ‘civilian’.

Gladkov accused them of dropping ‘an explosive device from a drone’ which hit a civilian who was ‘at his summer cottage mowing the grass’ at the time.

Chernykh (pictured right) was supposedly mowing his lawn when the drone strike struck (Picture: MVD Belgorod)

He confirmed the person died from shrapnel wounds but did not name them.

If Chernykh’s death is confirmed he would become the latest high-ranking Russian official to meet his end since Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine.

Around six generals have been confirmed by Russian sources to have been killed since February 2022 (including four which held the rank of Major General and two Lieutenant Generals), with Ukraine claiming the true figure to be 15.

General Oleg Tsokov was killed by a Ukrainian missile strike last month.

He was sanctioned by both the UK and the EU for his role in the war against Ukraine.

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Ukraine has struck deep into Russia in recent months including an attack on the Kremlin in May and numerous drone attacks on civilian targets in Moscow. 

Just today Putin has suffered his worst night after four military planes at a Russian airport have been damaged in what appears to be the biggest drone attack on the country since the war in Ukraine began.

Unconfirmed media reports suggest between 10 and 20 drones hit an airbase in the Pskov region, near the border with Estonia and Latvia, just before midnight on Tuesday.

Images on social media show a vast black cloud of smoke coming from the site, lit orange by flames at its base.

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His day off ended in tragedy.