Ukrainian drones spark fire at Sochi oil depot
'Sochi suffered a drone attack by the Kyiv regime last night,' the governor of Russia's Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratiev, said on Telegram. He said drone wreckage hit an 'oil tank, which caused a fire' during the night-time attack. Sochi's mayor, Andrei Proshunin, said there were no victims and that the fire was put out several hours later.
Images, broadcast by Russian media but whose authenticity AFP could not verify, showed flames and a thick plumes of black smoke rising from the site. Air traffic was briefly suspended at Sochi airport, Russia's air transport regulator Rosaviatsia said. Ukraine authorities have not commented on the fire.
Air strikes on Sochi are relatively rare compared to some other Russian cities. However, Ukrainian drone attacks killed two people there late last month, according to local authorities.
Kyiv has said it will intensify its air strikes against Russia in response to an increase in Russian attacks on its territory in recent weeks, which have killed dozens of civilians. The Russian defense ministry said meanwhile that three Ukrainian drones had been intercepted in the Leningrad region, which includes the Baltic port of Saint Petersburg. Overnight strikes by Russia inside Ukraine also left several people injured, authorities said. One missile wounded seven people in a residential district of Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
Three other people were injured in the northeastern Kharkiv region, she added, while authorities also reported injuries in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south.
'The Russians continue to wage war not against Ukrainian forces, but against Ukrainian civilians,' Svyrydenko said. Last week, US President Donald Trump gave his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a 10-day ultimatum, until next Friday, to end the conflict in Ukraine. The air strikes and fighting have not abated, however, and the Kremlin has rejected the idea of a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine, which it sees as a gift to Kyiv's troops.
The Russian defense ministry said its air defense units destroyed 93 Ukrainian drones overnight, including one over the Krasnodar region and 60 over the waters of the Black Sea. The ministry reports only how many drones its units destroy, not how many Ukraine launched. Rosaviatsia, Russia's civil aviation authority, briefly halted flights at Sochi's airport before resuming them.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which has staged frequent attacks on infrastructure inside Russia that Kyiv deems key to Moscow's war efforts. A woman was killed in the Adler district of Sochi in a Ukrainian drone attack late last month, but attacks on the city, which hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, have been infrequent in the war that Russia launched in February 2022.
The Krasnodar region is home to the Ilsky refinery near the city of Krasnodar, among the largest in southern Russia and a frequent target of Ukraine's drone attacks. Also on Sunday, the governor of Voronezh region in southern Russia said four people were injured in a Ukrainian drone strike that caused several fires, while Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv, according to the military administration of the Ukrainian capital. – Agencies
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