Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv faces Russian missile attack as both sides trade strikes

The Guardian

4 days ago

Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv early on Sunday, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters' witnesses heard a loud blast shaking the city soon after midnight. The reported attack comes days after Russia's worst airstrike of the year on Kyiv, which killed at least 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150.
Ukraine on Saturday said it hit military targets and a gas pipeline in drone attacks in Russia, where local authorities said three people were killed and two others wounded. Ukraine's SBU security service said the strikes, carried out on Friday night by long-distance drones, hit a military airfield in the south-western town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk. They caused a fire in an areas where Iranian-built Shahed drones – relied on by Russia to attack Ukraine – were stored, the SBU said.
The SBU said the strikes also hit a company in Russia's southern Penza region, which it said 'works for the Russian military-industrial complex', making military digital networks, aviation devices, armoured vehicles and ships. The governor for Russia's Penza region, Oleg Melnichenko, said on Telegram that one woman had been killed and two other people were wounded in that attack.
Russia's defence ministry said its air-defence systems had destroyed 112 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory – 34 over the Rostov region – in a nearly nine-hour period, from Friday night to Saturday morning. An elderly man was killed inside a house that caught fire due to falling drone debris in the Samara region, governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev posted on Telegram. In the Rostov region, a guard at an industrial facility was killed after a drone attack and a fire in one of the site's buildings, acting Rostov governor Yuri Sliusar said. 'The military repelled a massive air attack during the night,' destroying drones over seven districts, Sliusar posted on Telegram.
Meanwhile the Ukraine military's Unmanned Systems Forces said they had hit a Russian oil refinery in Ryazan, south-east of Moscow, causing a fire on its premises. Also hit, the USF said, was the Annanefteprodukt oil storage facility in the Voronezh region that borders on northeastern Ukraine. The statement did not specify how the facilities were hit, but the USF specialises in drone warfare, including long-range strikes.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strike in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022. Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow's war efforts and are in response to Russia's relentless strikes on Ukraine.
Indian oil refineries will continue to buy oil from Russia, officials have said, before threatened US sanctions next week against Moscow's trading partners over the war in Ukraine. Media reports on Friday had suggested India, a big energy importer, would stop buying cheap Russian oil. Trump later told reporters that such a move would be 'a good step' if true. 'I understand that India is no longer going to be buying oil from Russia,' he said. 'That's what I heard. I don't know if that's right or not. That is a good step. We will see what happens.'
Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday that they had arrested several politicians in connection with a 'large-scale corruption scheme' in the defence sector, shortly after an uproar over the independence of anti-graft bodies. A law passed in late July stripped the National Anti-Corruption Agency (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) of their independence and placed them under the supervision of the prosecutor general, himself appointed by the head of state. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday backtracked and restored the bodies' independence after an outcry from the country's allies and the first anti-government street demonstrations since Russia's invasion.
The NABU on Saturday said it and the SAP had exposed 'a scheme for the systematic misappropriation of budget funds allocated by local authorities for the needs of the defence forces, as well as the receipt and provision of unlawful benefits on an especially large scale'. It said the scheme involved inflating prices for electronic warfare and drone equipment, and then funnelling off 30% of the contract amounts. The suspects include a member of parliament, heads of district and city administrations, members of the National Guard, and executives at defence companies. The NABU said it has made four arrests so far but did not identify those detained.
Zelensky said in a statement: 'I am grateful to the anti-corruption agencies for their work … It is important that anti-corruption institutions operate independently, and the law passed on Thursday guarantees them all the tools necessary for a real fight against corruption.'
A fire that broke out near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant after Ukrainian shelling has been brought under control, the Russian-installed administration of the plant in Ukraine said on Saturday. Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant in the first weeks of Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Both sides have accused each other of firing or taking other actions that could trigger a nuclear accident. The plant's administration said on Telegram that a civilian had been killed in the shelling, but that no plant employees or members of the emergency services had been injured. The station, Europe's biggest nuclear power plant, is not operating but still requires power to keep its nuclear fuel cool.