Ukraine war briefing: Drones hit Russian electronic warfare plant and disrupt railway and air travel
Drones again targeted Moscow, said the mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, and an industrial facility in the Penza oblast south-east of the capital, according to the region’s governor, Oleg Melnichenko. In the Rostov region, officials said Ukrainian drones killed two people.
Ukraine’s regions of Dnipro in the south and Sumy in the north-east came under combined rocket and drone attack into Saturday, local officials reported. The head of the Dnipro regional administration, Serhii Lysak, said at least two people died and five were wounded. In the city of Dnipro, a multi-storey building and business were damaged and outside the city a fire engulfed a shopping centre.
In Sumy, the military administration said three people were injured. Russian drones hit a central square in Sumy city, and damaged the building of the regional administration. Kharkiv sustained an intense aerial bombardment with Ukraine’s state emergency service reporting six people were hurt, including four rescuers wounded in a “double tap” where a second attack targeted emergency workers trying to help the victims of the first.
According to Ukraine’s air force, Russia launched 208 drones and 27 missiles overnight into Saturday. It said according to preliminary data, air defences and electronic warfare took down or intercepted 183 drones and 17 missiles, but hits from 10 missiles and 25 drones were recorded in nine locations.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed its forces had captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine: Zelenyi Hai in the Donetsk region and Maliivka just inside the Dnipropetrovsk region. The Ukrainian military’s general staff mentioned Zelenyi Hai as one of several frontline areas that had come under Russian attack 11 times over the past 24 hours. It said Maliivka was one of several villages where 10 Russian attacks had been halted.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, had identified Pokrovsk as an area requiring “special attention” due to constant attack. A military spokesperson, Viktor Trehubov, told national television that Russian forces were attacking Pokrovsk in “a small torrent … that simply does not stop”. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had recorded “successful actions” in Sumy. The Reuters news agency, which reported on the developments, could not independently confirm battlefield accounts from either side.
Russia’s defence ministry on Saturday claimed that it struck military facilities in Ukraine that “manufacture components for missile weapons, as well as produce ammunition and explosives”. The claim could not be independently verified. Zelenskyy posted that that “there can be absolutely no silence in response to such strikes, and Ukrainian long-range drones ensure this. Russian military enterprises, Russian logistics, Russian airports must feel that the Russian war has real consequences for them.”
An Indian firm that shipped $1.4m worth of an explosive compound with military uses to Russia said on Saturday that it complies with Indian rules and the substance was for civilian industrial purposes. A Reuters investigation found that HMX, also called octogen, was sent to two Russian explosives manufacturers despite the threat of international sanctions. Ukraine’s drones have attacked the factory of one of the Russian companies after security services linked it to Russia’s military.
The Indian company involved emailed Reuters saying its shipment was “for industrial activity and it’s a civil explosive”. The US government has identified HMX as “critical for Russia’s war effort”. It is widely used in missile and torpedo warheads, rocket motors, exploding projectiles and plastic-bonded explosives for advanced military systems, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Technical Information Center and related defense research programmes. The compound also has some limited civilian applications in mining and other industrial activities.