A Ukrainian drone triggers warehouse explosions in Russia as a war of attrition continues

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — A village in a border region of western Russia was evacuated Sunday following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said.

Social media videos appeared to show black clouds of smoke rising in the Voronezh region, while loud explosions could be heard one after the other.

Governor Alexander Gusev said falling debris had triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.” No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in Podgorensky district were evacuated, he said. Roads were also closed, and emergency services, military and government officials were working at the scene.

A Ukrainian security official told the Associated Press that an attack had been carried out on an ammunition depot in the village of Serhiivka in the Voronezh region.

“The enemy stored surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, and boxes of cartridges for firearms,” ​​said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information to the media. “It is from this warehouse that the occupiers supply their troops in Ukraine with ammunition.”

The official also said that Ukraine’s State Security Service was behind a drone attack on an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region the previous day. Russian emergency services had reported that falling drone debris sparked a fire at the site, which was successfully extinguished on Sunday morning.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not comment on the two attacks in its morning briefing, but said that air defense systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.

The attacks come after a Ukrainian military spokesman told AP on Thursday that Kyiv’s troops had withdrawn from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that was reduced to rubble by a months-long Russian assault.

Russian forces have been trying for months to gain a foothold in Ukraine’s industrial east, in what appears to be an attempt to draw the country’s defenders into a war of attrition. In a joint investigation published on Friday, independent Russian news agencies Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces in Ukraine are losing between 200 and 250 soldiers a day.

Military analysts say the fall of Khasiv Yar could also jeopardize Ukraine’s key supply routes and put nearby cities at risk, bringing Russia one step closer to its stated goal of capturing the entire Donetsk region.

The Russian attacks also targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Officials in Kyiv said on Saturday that the city had restored two-thirds of its electricity generation capacity after Russian missile attacks destroyed key power plants.

“Enormous work has been done,” said Petro Panteleev, deputy head of Kyiv’s city administration. “The city’s energy facilities, most of which were built during the Soviet era, are being modernized and have become significantly more efficient.”

Russia fired two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones on Sunday night, Ukrainian Air Force officials said. All of them were shot down, but officials did not provide any further details on the missiles’ impact.

According to local regional authorities, eight people were killed in Russian attacks in Ukraine in the past 24 hours.

Four people were killed in the Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said, while in Donetsk Governor Vadym Filashkin said two more people were killed in the cities of Niu-York and Ukrainsk. In Dnipropetrovsk, a 65-year-old woman was killed in a Russian attack in Nikopol district, while in the Kharkiv region a 47-year-old man was killed, Governors Serhii Lysak and Oleh Syniehubov said in their respective statements.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, 14 people died when a bus collided with a truck. There was only one survivor, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Saturday evening. A six-year-old child was among the victims.

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Associated Press writer Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report. Full coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine