Ukrainian drones spark fire at Russian Sochi oil depot
Sochi's mayor, Andrei Proshunin, said there were no victims and 'The situation is totally under control', adding that firefighters were continuing to extinguish the blaze. Images, broadcast by Russian media showed flames and a thick plumes of black smoke rising from the site. Air traffic was briefly suspended at Sochi airport but resumed shortly afterward, Russia's air transport regulator Rosaviatsia said. Ukraine authorities had 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 defence ministry said meanwhile that three Ukrainian drones had been intercepted in the Leningrad region, which includes the Baltic seaport of Saint Petersburg.
Overnight strikes by Russia inside Ukraine's south and north 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 local 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 ten-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.
Ukraine said on Saturday 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 by long-distance drones, hit a military airfield in the southwestern town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk. They caused a fire in an areas where drones were stored, the SBU said. It said the strikes also hit a company, Elektropribor, 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 the 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.
An analysis published on Friday showed that Russia's forces in July launched an unprecedented number of drones, 6,297 of them.
The figure included decoy drones sent into Ukraine's skies in efforts to saturate the country's air-defence systems. In Ukraine's central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian drone attacks on Friday night wounded three people, governor Sergiy Lysak wrote on Telegram. Several buildings, homes and cars were damaged, he said. — AFP
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Ukrainian drones spark fire at Russian Sochi oil depot
An overnight Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an oil depot in Sochi, the Russian resort that hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, around 400 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, authorities said. Ukraine has regularly hit Russian oil and gas infrastructure in response to attacks on its own territory since Russia began its offensive in February 2022. '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'. Sochi's mayor, Andrei Proshunin, said there were no victims and 'The situation is totally under control', adding that firefighters were continuing to extinguish the blaze. Images, broadcast by Russian media showed flames and a thick plumes of black smoke rising from the site. Air traffic was briefly suspended at Sochi airport but resumed shortly afterward, Russia's air transport regulator Rosaviatsia said. Ukraine authorities had 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 defence ministry said meanwhile that three Ukrainian drones had been intercepted in the Leningrad region, which includes the Baltic seaport of Saint Petersburg. Overnight strikes by Russia inside Ukraine's south and north 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 local 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 ten-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. Ukraine said on Saturday 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 by long-distance drones, hit a military airfield in the southwestern town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk. They caused a fire in an areas where drones were stored, the SBU said. It said the strikes also hit a company, Elektropribor, 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 the 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. An analysis published on Friday showed that Russia's forces in July launched an unprecedented number of drones, 6,297 of them. The figure included decoy drones sent into Ukraine's skies in efforts to saturate the country's air-defence systems. In Ukraine's central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian drone attacks on Friday night wounded three people, governor Sergiy Lysak wrote on Telegram. Several buildings, homes and cars were damaged, he said. — AFP
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Trump orders subs repositioned in rare nuclear threat to Russia
President Donald Trump said on his social media feed on Friday that he had 'ordered two nuclear submarines' to be repositioned in response to online threats from Russia's former president, Dmitry Medvedev, a rare case of potential nuclear escalation between the superpowers. Trump said he had ordered the submarines 'to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.' He added: 'Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.' Medvedev, who often serves as something of an online attack dog for the Kremlin, had said in a social media post of his own on Thursday that Trump should picture the apocalyptic television series 'The Walking Dead' and referred to the Soviet Union's system for launching a last-ditch, automatic nuclear strike. Because nuclear submarine movements are among the Pentagon's most closely held tactical maneuvers, it will most likely prove impossible to know if Trump is truly repositioning the submarines or just trying to make a point. But in Trump's sudden and escalating confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, it is the first time he has referenced the US nuclear arsenal, much less threatened to reposition it. Trump said on Thursday that he intends to impose new sanctions on Russia over its unwillingness to wind down its war in Ukraine, the latest step in his gradual shift toward a more antagonistic stance toward the Kremlin. Trump said last month that he would give Russia 50 days to begin serious peace talks with Ukraine. The Russian response was to ramp up attacks, including one on Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, on Thursday night that killed more than 30 civilians. This week, Trump said his deadline was being shortened to 10 to 12 days, and Thursday he said he had decided to impose 'secondary sanctions' on countries that buy Russian oil. That would include China, India and Turkey, all countries with which Trump has other ongoing negotiations. Trump and Putin have talked repeatedly by phone or secure video since the president took office, but they have not met in person. It is a meeting Trump has said is vital, suggesting nothing on Ukraine would be resolved until the two men hashed it out between themselves. But his tone about Russia has hardened, and his position on sanctions has reversed, in recent weeks. Still, such public flexing of nuclear muscles is rare even for Trump, who last made explicit nuclear threats to Kim Jong Un of North Korea early in his first term in 2018. At that time he said his 'nuclear button' was 'much bigger and more powerful' than Kim's. That exchange ultimately led to a diplomatic opening to Kim, three meetings between the two leaders — and a complete failure of the effort to get the North Korean leader to give up his nuclear arsenal, which is now larger than ever. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance arrive in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. But Russia is a different case, and Trump has often talked about the fearsome power of nuclear weapons, something he contends he learned about from an uncle who was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So while Russian President Vladimir Putin has made threats about putting nuclear forces on alert during the opening days of the Ukraine war, and may have been preparing to use a tactical nuclear weapon in fall 2022 against a Ukrainian military base, the US has never responded. Medvedev is a good foil for Trump; he regularly issues threats against the United States, but is essentially powerless. Trump has referred to Medvedev's martial-sounding statements several times in the past week. It is unclear, though, why Medvedev's mix of hyperbole, threat and trolling got under Trump's skin. As Trump was leaving the White House on Friday for a weekend in Bedminster, New Jersey, he was asked why he ordered a redeployment of submarines. 'We just have to be careful,' he said. 'And a threat was made and we didn't think it was appropriate, so I have to be very careful. So I do that on the basis of safety for our people. A threat was made by a former president of Russia, and we're going to protect our people.' It was not clear what kind of nuclear submarines to which Trump was referring, or how redeploying them would provide any significant additional protection. The United States has nuclear-powered attack submarines that search for targets, but it also has far larger, nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines. Those don't need to be repositioned; they can reach targets thousands of miles away. In fact, moving them can risk exposing their position. Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, referred all questions about Trump's statement to the White House. A senior Western military officer with experience in the world of submarine warfare said he was not sure what tactical actions may have taken place. But he said that because submarines operate so stealthily, Trump was free to declare he was taking action and the Russians would have to decide whether or not to believe him.
