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Drones hit Moscow
Ukraine launched more than 400 drones toward Moscow in its latest major attack on the Russian capital, the city’s mayor said Monday, hours after Russia bombarded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the onslaught lasted from late Sunday until early Monday, with most downed far from the city and 85 intercepted near it, and the attack started a fire at the Yuzhnye Vrata industrial park about 30 kilometres south of Moscow.
Russian regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov said 10 people were wounded by Ukrainian drones, while several residential buildings and civilian infrastructure facilities were damaged.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces hit two vessels belonging to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet transporting sanctioned oil and four dry cargo ships in the Black Sea, and Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired two missiles and 94 long-range drones at Ukraine overnight.
Protests and retaliation
As the drone attack unfolded, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would hold “key talks” Monday as he tries to defuse a domestic political crisis after last week’s government reshuffle exposed a deep split between the military’s old guard and young innovators.
The Associated Press said Zelenskyy needs to reassure Ukrainians that sacrificing 35-year-old Mykhailo Fedorov as defense minister and keeping faith with 60-year-old Soviet-trained Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi as armed forces chief won’t derail the fight against Russia.
In response to the Moscow-region strikes, Zelenskyy said on social media in confirming the Ukrainian drone attacks targeting the Moscow region that “We are responding, justly, to every Russian strike against our cities and communities,” adding that Kyiv’s “long-range sanctions have produced results against logistics facilities and an oil depot.”
The BBC said the Russian strike on a ship near Odesa killed at least 10 people while Ukraine launched hundreds of drones to attack Moscow, and it reported that officials said eight crew members had been rescued.
Logistics and casualties
Russian forces struck fuel tanks in the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa overnight, and a Russian strike on Pavlohrad in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region injured 13 people, according to military administration head Oleksandr Hanzha, with 11 people hospitalized including a 13-year-old girl.
“A Russian strike on a ship near the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa has killed at least 10 people, while Ukraine has launched hundreds of drones to attack Moscow, a day after Kyiv was hit by one of the heaviest barrages of ballistic missiles of the war”
The Associated Press reported that a drone struck a passenger bus in Shebekino in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, killing five people — four women and a boy — and injuring 23 others, and it said it was not possible to independently verify either side’s claims.
In the Black Sea, Ukraine’s Sea Ports Authority said a cargo vessel under the flag of the West African country of Guinea Bissau was hit by Russian forces on Sunday shortly after it left the port of Odesa, killing 10 of its crew including five sailors from Syria, while eight people were rescued and the ship was carrying Ukrainian corn.
Al Jazeera reported that Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukraine, frequently using ballistic missiles, as Kyiv is currently short of Patriot interceptor munitions crucial to defend against them, while it said Ukraine intensified its attacks on Russian territory by targeting Moscow and the surrounding region with hundreds of drones overnight.
