KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — A village on Russia’s western border was evacuated Sunday after debris from a Ukrainian drone crash set a nearby warehouse on fire and triggered a series of explosions, local authorities said.
Footage on social media showed plumes of black smoke rising from the Voronezh region and a series of loud explosions being heard.
Governor Alexander Gusev said the crashed debris caused an “explosive detonation.” No casualties were reported, but residents of nearby villages in the Podgorensky district have been evacuated, the governor said. Roads have also been closed and emergency services, military and government officials are at the scene.
A Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press that the attack took place on a warehouse storing ammunition in the village of Serhiivka in the Voronezh region.
“The enemy has stored boxes of surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, and cartridges for firearms,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide information to the media. “From this warehouse, the occupation forces are supplying ammunition to Ukrainian units.”
The official also said Ukraine’s State Security Service was behind a drone attack on an oil storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region the previous day. Russian emergency services reported that debris from a fallen drone caused a fire at the site, but that it was safely extinguished by Sunday morning.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not mention either attack in its morning briefing but said its air defense systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.
The attack came after a Ukrainian military spokesman told The Associated Press on Thursday: Kiev’s troops have withdrawn from the surrounding area The outskirts of Khashiv Yar, a strategically important town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, have been reduced to ruins after a month of Russian military offensives.
Russian Army The Russian military has been making steady gains in Ukraine’s eastern industrial regions for months in an apparent attempt to draw Ukraine’s defense forces into a war of attrition. A joint investigation by independent Russian news outlets Meduza and Mediazona published on Friday found that Moscow’s military is losing between 200 and 250 soldiers in Ukraine every day.
Military analysts say the fall of Shasiv Yar could cripple Ukraine’s vital supply routes, endanger nearby cities and bring Russia closer to its goal of taking control of the entire Donetsk region.
Russia’s attacks are also a focus Ukraine’s Energy InfrastructureAuthorities in Kiev said on Saturday that two-thirds of the city’s electricity generation capacity had been restored after a Russian missile strike destroyed a major power station.
“A huge amount of work has been done,” said Petro Panteleyev, deputy head of Kyiv city administration. “The city’s energy facilities, mostly built in the Soviet era, have been modernized and made much more efficient.”
Russia launched two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones late on Sunday evening, Ukrainian air force officials said. All the missiles were shot down, but officials did not provide details about the missiles’ impact.
Eight people were killed in Russian attacks across Ukraine yesterday, according to local authorities.
Four people were killed in Kherson oblast, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said, while in Donetsk oblast, Governor Vadim Filashkin said two more were killed in the towns of Nyov and Ukrayinsk. In Dnipropetrovsk, a 65-year-old woman was killed in Russian attacks in the Nikopol district, and in Kharkiv oblast, Governors Serhiy Rysak and Oleg Shnievbov said in separate statements.
In Ukraine, a bus collided with a cargo vehicle, killing 14 people and leaving one survivor, Interior Minister Igor Klimenko said on Saturday evening. The victims included a six-year-old child.
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Associated Press writer Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report. Full coverage of the Ukraine war: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
