Exploding ammunition killed Igor Nechiporenko, deputy head of the Korochansky district in western Russia’s Belgorod region, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced on Sunday.

The region, which borders the northeastern Ukrainian border and is just 80 kilometres from Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, has increasingly been the target of Ukrainian air strikes.

Gladkov did not specify how the explosion occurred, but said that it had also injured three other regional administrators, Nikolay Nesterov, Andrey Vedenin and Igor Shevlyakov. All three received medical assistance and have now “returned to their places of work”, Gladkov wrote.

Gladkov also reported that shelling in Shebekino, in another district of Belgorod, injured six civilians, all of whom were taken to a local hospital, as well as two artillery shells striking the regional capital Belgorod, and 28 rockets and 14 Shahed drones attacking other parts of the region overnight.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday that it had downed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region overnight.