A UKRAINIAN drone strike killed 24 people and wounded at least 50 more as they celebrated the New Year in a Russian-occupied village in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Russian officials said on Thursday.

Three drones struck a cafe and hotel in the resort town of Khorly on the Black Sea coast, the region’s Moscow-installed leader Vladimir Saldo said in a statement on Telegram. He said that one of the drones carried an incendiary mixture, sparking a blaze.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the claim of a strike.

The statement follows claims from Moscow that Ukraine launched a long-range drone attack against one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official residences in north-western Russia overnight from Sunday to Monday. Kiev has denounced the claims as a “lie.”

Meanwhile, in his New Year’s address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a peace deal was “90 per cent ready” but warned that the remaining 10 per cent, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would “determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live.”

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia attacked the Odessa region overnight today, targeting civilian infrastructure in several waves of drone attacks, according to regional head Oleh Kiper.

In a post on Telegram, Mr Kiper said a two-storey residential building was damaged and that a drone hit a block of flats on the 17th floor without detonating. There were no casualties reported.