Russia unleashed a missile and drone barrage Sunday across parts of Ukraine that killed six people, Kyiv officials said, as Moscow followed through on its promise to retaliate for an attack on a Russian tanker.
Separately, Moscow’s second-largest airport briefly suspended flights early Sunday following a foiled drone attack near the Russian capital.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 70 drones and missiles from aircraft over the Caspian Sea, including Iranian-made, Shahed-136/131 strike UAVs.
Three waves of missiles hit the Starokostiantyniv area, damaging several buildings and igniting a fire at a warehouse, said Serhiy Tyurin, deputy head of Ukraine’s Khmelnytsky region military administration. The strike may have been intended for the city’s airfield, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the facilities of aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich in the Zaporizhzhia region had also come under attack.
The Russian barrage followed a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea late Friday. Ukraine also struck a major Russian port with drones earlier the same day.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned what she called a Ukrainian “terrorist attack” on a civilian vessel in the Kerch Strait.
“There can be no justification for such barbaric actions, they will not go unanswered and their authors and perpetrators will inevitably be punished,” she posted on the Telegram messaging app.
An official with Ukraine’s Security Service confirmed to The Associated Press that a Ukrainian drone packed with 450 kilograms (992 pounds) of explosives struck the tanker that was transporting fuel for Russian forces. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Russia's Federal Agency for Marine and River Transport posted on Telegram that although the drone blasted a hole in the tanker's engine room, there were no casualties among the 11 crew members. On Sunday, a Ukrainian missile hit the Chonhar bridge connecting the Russian-occupied Kherson region and northern Crimea, causing minor damage to the span’s roadway, said Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-installed leader of the Kherson region. He also said several more rockets had been shot down by air defense forces.
The bridge, which is one of three key spans connecting the Crimean Peninsula to the mainland, was previously attacked on July 22 and July 29.
Two of the six killed overnight occurred during a Russian airstrike in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the head of the local regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov. Four others were injured.
Zelenskyy said a guided bomb had hit a blood transfusion center in the area’s Kupyan district late on Saturday.
“This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “Defeating terrorists is a matter of honor for everyone who values life.”
Heavy shelling continued along the front line in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv continued its ongoing counteroffensive. Elsewhere in the Kharkiv region, a 58-year-old woman was killed and a 66-year-old man was wounded after Russian shelling of the village of Podoly, an official said. In Ukraine's eastern Kupyan region, Russian missiles injured a 55-year-old man and ignited a forest fire, officials said on social media. Russian attacks in the Donetsk region villages of Torske and Niu-York killed two people, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on social media.
Ukrainian shelling in Russian-held Donetsk killed a woman in her 80s, Moscow-appointed Mayor Alexei Kulemzin said. The shelling also set the main building of a university on fire, according to Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed head of the illegally annexed region.
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said the blaze caused the building’s roof to collapse, but that there were no casualties.
Moscow's Vnukovo airport, located 15 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of the capital, briefly suspended flights Sunday morning after a drone was shot down in the airspace around the city. It was the fourth attack on Moscow in a month, highlighting the city’s vulnerability as Russia’s war grinds into its 18th month. The drone was destroyed by air defense systems in the Podolsk region of the Moscow suburbs, Russia's Defense Ministry said.
It said no one was injured from the abortive drone attack, although Russian media outlet Baza later reported a 77-year-old man suffered a shrapnel wound on his hand. The reports could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian authorities, which generally avoid commenting on attacks on Russian soil, didn’t say whether it launched the raid.
Flights were last halted at the airport on July 30, when two drones crashed into the Moscow City business district after being jammed by Russian air defenses.
Also on Sunday, Ukraine replaced the Soviet hammer and sickle that adorned the 200-foot (61-meter) Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv with the tryzub, the three-pronged trident that was officially adopted as the country's coat of arms in 1992.
The change to one of the nation’s most recognizable landmarks is part of a wider shift throughout Ukraine to reclaim its cultural identity from the Soviet era amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
34 Comments
2020hindsights
That's what it says, but it conducts missile attacks on Ukraine all the time, so they are empty words...
stormcrow
Putin to his generals:
More women and children, please! I have still not had my fill!
Strangerland
To be a retaliation, Russia would not have to already be sending missile and drone strikes against Ukraine in the first place.
Russia are the aggressors, Ukraine is retaliating. Russia doesn't get to be the victim here, when any deaths of their own people are a direct result of their decision to invade Ukraine in it's 3-day war to take over the country.
The headline is incorrect.
2020hindsights
Obviously, a legitimate military target. Ukraine targets military, Russia targets civilians.
EFD
Oh no! Don’t blow up their bridges, ships or ammo dumps or they’ll target our children!
Oh wait their doing that anyway?
Never mind. Blast away.
EFD
They’re”.
Apologies
gcbel
Bucha.
As for the tanker, if it was transporting fuel for and to Russian forces, then it was certainly a legitimate target. During WWII the US Navy sunk thousands of tonnes of Axis merchant shipping, including, of course, tankers.
Eastman
action-reaction.
if anyone from you have expected that Russia will do nothing about it must be very naive...
UA side very desperate as loosing own live forces at record high scale these days and no way to make any dramatic change on front in their favour...while other side is not hurry...dont need to mention abt amount of NATO and swedish weaponry became burned easy...some even with RPG7
2020hindsights
Eastman
They aren't doing anything different from what they have been doing for the past year, so it's hard to tell.
Sure, it's difficult going for UA, but they are losing equipment at half the rate of the Russian forces.
Eastman
anyone still believes that UA have any chance to win over Russia?
dont you think its about time to stop this conflict now and start to talk about peace instead of funding Kiev junta with money and useless easy-to-be-burned guns?
2020hindsights
Eastman
Yes.
Capitulating now risks losing the whole of Ukraine. The path to peace is to stand by Ukraine against the imperialist Russian forces.
wallace
The Russians hit a blood center with a missile attack killing doctors and nurses.
Strangerland
Russia already did something about it, they invaded Ukraine, which caused Ukraine to retaliate.
If Russia wasn't in a state of droning and missiling Ukraine before this attack, the resultant drones and missiles would be something to avoid. But they were already doing it. So Russia sending more drones and missiles is the status quo, but now Ukraine got to also send some attacks.
That bridge to Crimea is an awfully nice looking target!
Eastman
UA heroi wanted war.
and they get it.
did they attacked russian civilian infrastructure like Crimean bridge or oil tanker?
they did.
action reaction guys.
you get what you have asked for.
Blacklabel
wonder why that would be?
cause it’s wrong and against the rules the West set for the proxy war?
2020hindsights
Blacklabel
Ukrainian authorities, which generally avoid commenting on attacks on Russian soil
No.
JJE
Kyiv's position is going from bad to worse as the counter offensive is a debacle.
Not mentioned (the media is pretending it's not happening) is the significant deterioration of relations between the Kyiv regime and Poland. They are publicly trading insults. And this was always going to happen - the bandera nationalists loath the Poles and vice versa.
The endgame for this doomed regime will not be a pretty picture. Even more grim will be the rump state left behind.
Their latest charade is to hold a "peace summit" in Saudi Arabia and not bothering to invite Russia. Completely delusional stuff.
Eastman
JJE
Correct.
As you wrote,UA is done for good.
JJE
Good point. Purge the legacy of the USSR/CCCP.
An even bigger statue to the Soviet legacy is Crimea.
People should be out dancing on the streets celebrating its removal.
u_s__reamer
No wars last forever so while more and more human lives are fed into the maw of Putin's war, somewhere in Russia there is an open window waiting for the war criminals or a bunker where they can put an end their worthless lives. I want to believe that Russians will eventually wake up to the enormity of what has been wrought in their name on their Slav brothers and sisters, and that the "good Russians" will finally prevail by ending the bloodshed and bringing freedom and democracy to their benighted land.
gcbel
Strong no to that, bub. The only realistic path to end the conflict is to give Ukraine what it needs to drive out the aggressor, Russia.
What you’re looking for is for Ukraine to submit. Nice try. Hard pass from our Ukrainian friend I believe and rightly so. .
Eastman
gcbel
heroi are waiting for you so you can show them "how to do" so be realistic and lead by good example.
front is waiting for you and your knowledge.as you are one they need to end this conflict.
Blacklabel
Good thing they have their priorities straight to focus on redesigning a statue during the failed counter offensive
gcbel
Is that the best comeback you got? Russia really is in trouble.
Blacklabel
Next time that statue should be much shorter and of Zelensky with both hands out.
gcbel
No, it doesn’t. Ukrainians know ceding anything now will only delay at best further aggression, never to stop it.
To believe otherwise is breathtakingly naive.
La vie douce
Yamaneko - " Ukraine cannot win this conflict unfortunately. They can continue fighting and their bravery is certainly commendable however the end game is no scenario where Ukraine will succeed in forcing the Russians out. The realistic unfortunate truth. And no capt American wont run in and save them at the last minute."
Unfortunate but fairly realistic assesment of the situation. Many denialists on here will downvote you for that fact.
JJE
Interesting development.
According to the WSJ, at the "peace summit" in Saudi Arabia, the Ukrainian side did not insist on the so-called "Zelensky formula", which implies the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the territories that Ukraine considers its own.
Maybe someone is having a bout of reality.
Eastman
wanna stop this conflict?
stop funding Kiev junta.
than they will have no choice just to negotiate with Russia and will save many lives.
earlier-better.
gcbel
wanna stop the conflict?
give Ukraine what it needs to roll back Russia
then there will be no fake peace that Russia will turn around and break anytime it wants
Ukraine’s choice to make of course.
Earlier we start training Ukrainian pilots the better