A village in western Russia’s border region was evacuated Sunday following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said. Social media footage appeared to show rising clouds of black smoke in the Voronezh region while loud explosions could be heard in succession.
Gov. Aleksandr Gusev said that falling wreckage triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.” No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in the Podgorensky district were evacuated, he said. Roads were also closed with emergency services, military, and government officials working at the scene.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not address the strike in their morning briefing but said that air defense systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region. Authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar province on Saturday said a fire at an oil depot had also been caused by falling drone debris. Russia’s emergency services said the blaze was extinguished Sunday morning.
The strikes come after a Ukrainian military spokesperson told The Associated Press Thursday that Kyiv’s troops had retreated from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble under a monthlong Russian assault.
Russian forces have for months tried to grind out gains in Ukraine’s industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition. In a joint investigation published Friday, independent Russian news outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces were losing between 200 and 250 soldiers in Ukraine each day.
Military analysts say Chasiv Yar’s fall could also compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and put nearby cities in jeopardy, bringing Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region. Russia sent overnight into Sunday two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones, Ukrainian air force officials said. All were shot down but the officials did not elaborate on the impact of the missiles.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, 14 people died after a bus collided with a cargo vehicle, leaving a single survivor, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Saturday evening. The victims included a 6-year-old child.
A village in a border region of western Russia was evacuated on July 7 following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said. Social media footage appeared to show rising clouds of black smoke in the Voronezh region while loud explosions could be heard in succession. Governor Aleksandr Gusev said that falling wreckage triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.” No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in the Podgorensky district were evacuated, he said. Roads were also closed with emergency services, military, and government officials working at the scene.
A Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press that a strike had been carried out on a warehouse storing ammunition in the village of Serhiivka in the Voronezh region. “The enemy stored surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, and boxes of cartridges for firearms,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give the information to the media. “It is from this warehouse that the occupiers supply ammunition to their troops in Ukraine.” The official also said that Ukraine’s State Security Service was behind a drone attack on an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region the previous day. Russian emergency services had reported that falling drone debris had started a fire at the site, which was successfully extinguished Sunday morning.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not address either strike in their morning briefing but said that air defence systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region. The strikes come after a Ukrainian military spokesperson told AP on Thursday that Kyiv’s troops had retreated from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble under a month-long Russian assault.
Russian forces have for months tried to grind out gains in Ukraine’s industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition. In a joint investigation published Friday, independent Russian news outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces were losing between 200 and 250 soldiers in Ukraine each day. Military analysts say Chasiv Yar’s fall could also compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and put nearby cities in jeopardy, bringing Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.
Russian strikes have also heavily targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Officials in Kyiv said Saturday that the city had restored two-thirds of its power generation capacity after recent Russian missile attacks destroyed key power plants. “Colossal work has been carried out,” said deputy head of the Kyiv city administration Petro Panteleev. “The city’s energy facilities, which were built mainly in the Soviet period, are being modernized and become much more efficient.”
Russia sent overnight into Sunday two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones, Ukrainian air force officials said. All were shot down but the officials did not elaborate on the impact of the missiles. Eight people were killed in Russian attacks across Ukraine in the past day, according to local regional authorities. Four people were killed in the Kherson region, said Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin, while in Donetsk, Gov. Vadym Filashkin said another two people had been killed in the towns of Niu-York and Ukrainsk. In Dnipropetrovsk, a 65-year-old woman was killed in a Russian attack in the Nikopol district, while a 47-year old man was killed in the Kharkiv region, Governors Serhii Lysak and Oleh Syniehubov said in their respective statements.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, 14 people died after a bus collided with a cargo vehicle, leaving a single survivor, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Saturday evening. The victims included a 6-year-old child.
A Russian politician hoping to run against President Vladimir Putin in the country’s upcoming presidential election characterized the Kremlin’s decision to go to war against Ukraine as a “big mistake” on Thursday when he spoke with the wives of soldiers. Boris Nadezhdin told the soldiers’ wives that the war was “a big mistake by Putin, of course, and the consequences will be very grave.” Soldiers at the front were “fulfilling their debt, really spilling their blood there and risking their life — we want them simply to come back,” he said.
Nadezhdin represents the center-right party Civic Initiative, which has no seats in parliament. He is trying to gather 100,000 signatures from people across the country to run against Putin, who has led Russia for more than two decades. Putin is all but guaranteed to win reelection in March.
In the Latvian capital of Riga on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow’s plan was to make tactical advances on the battlefield ahead of the presidential election and that Russia would then take larger military action. The comments came during Zelenskyy’s last stop on a tour of the three Baltic nations. Earlier on Thursday, during his visit to Estonia, Zelenskyy said a pause in Russia’s war against Ukraine would only benefit Russia by allowing it to boost its supply of munitions and “run us over.”
“A pause on the battlefield on the territory of Ukraine is not a pause in war. It is not the end of war,” Zelenskyy said. “It doesn’t lead to political dialogue with the Russian Federation or with someone else. This pause will only benefit the Russian Federation.”
Zelenskyy’s regional tour also included a stop in Lithuania. The Ukrainian leader said Wednesday in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, that his country’s forces have shown the world that Russia’s military can be stopped, but said the Kyiv government badly needs Western allies to send it more air defense systems to shoot down an increased barrage of incoming Russian drones and missiles. He acknowledged, however, that the stockpiles are low in countries that could assist Ukraine. “Warehouses are empty,” Zelenskyy said. “And there are many challenges to world defense.”
In the United States, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby on Thursday said U.S. assistance for Ukraine’s war effort has stopped amid ongoing negotiations in Washington over an aid package. “The assistance that we provided has now ground to a halt,” Kirby said. Although U.S. aid to Ukraine has stopped for the time being, the U.S. State Department on Thursday imposed sanctions over the transfer of North Korean ballistic missiles to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
“We will not hesitate to take further actions,” Blinken said in a statement announcing the sanctions against three Russian entities and one individual. North Korea’s “transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia supports Russia’s war of aggression, increases the suffering of the Ukrainian people, and undermines the global nonproliferation regime,” Blinken said.
As the war nears its two-year mark, Ukraine has said it is hoping to ramp up development of its domestic defense industry and work on joint projects with foreign governments to manufacture more ammunition and weapons. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are among Ukraine’s staunchest political, financial, and military supporters, and some in the Baltics worry they could be Moscow’s next target. The three countries were seized and annexed by Josef Stalin during World War II before regaining independence with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. They joined NATO in 2004, placing themselves under the military protection of the United States and its Western allies.
“Democratic countries have done a lot to help Ukraine, but we need to do more together so that Ukraine wins and the aggressor loses,” Estonian President Alar Karis said in a statement. “Then there is the hope that this will remain the last military aggression in Europe, where someone wants to dictate to their neighbor with missiles, drones, and cannons what political choices can be made,” he said.
As the Ukraine-Russia war drags on, Western military supplies to Ukraine have tailed off. In the United States, President Joe Biden’s request for more Ukraine aid is stalled in Congress, while Europe’s March pledge to provide 1 million artillery shells within 12 months has fallen short, with only about 300,000 delivered so far.
Source: The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters
