Russia has once again launched a massive night-time aerial attack on Ukraine, with 140 drones, sources from Kiev said on Thursday morning.
The Ukrainian military stated that 85 of these drones were shot down and the location of 52 was lost, which is usually attributed to electronic countermeasures. Damage was reported in the Kharkiv and Odessa regions.
Oleh Kiper, the regional governor of the southern Odessa region, wrote on Telegram that a woman was injured in the attacks. Additionally, port infrastructure and an inoperative educational institution were damaged, he said.
The Russian Ministry of Defence reported on Thursday morning that overnight 83 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and destroyed over nine Russian regions. The affected areas were the regions of Bryansk, Kursk, Lipetsk, Tver, Belgorod, Kaluga, Smolensk, Voronezh and Rostov.
Igor Artamonov, the governor of the Russian region of Lipetsk, wrote on his Telegram channel of a “massive drone attack.” A woman was injured by falling debris, and the power supply was temporarily partially disrupted, he said.
In the Voronezh region, there was damage to a gas pipeline, which has since been repaired, and damage to residential buildings.
The military reports from both sides cannot be verified in detail, but they suggest the scale of the attacks.
Ukraine has been defending itself for nearly three years against a full-scale Russian invasion. Both sides attack each other almost every night with drones. However, the consequences of the Ukrainian attacks are not comparable to the extent of the damage and casualties caused by Russia in its neighbouring country.
Moscow: Ukraine shelled expert convoy at nuclear plant
The Russian Defence Ministry has again blamed Ukraine for the failed rotation of international observers at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.
The ministry released videos on Thursday allegedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shelling a convoy of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), alongside a list of events with time stamps.
The information could not be independently verified.
IAEA director Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that the planned rotation had been cancelled due to intense military activity in the region.
“It is completely unacceptable that the safety of our staff is jeopardized in this way,” Grossi said. He added that he is in close contact with both sides.
The Zaporizhzhya plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, has been occupied by Russian troops since March 2022. IAEA observers at the plant are regularly rotated and normally travel across the Russian-Ukrainian front line into the area controlled by Kiev.
Moscow and Kiev regularly accuse each other of shelling the plant.
Both sides accused each other of preventing the rotation on Wednesday. Ukraine said Russia had deliberately delayed the approval of the location and timing of the crossing of the front line for the nuclear observers.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, Heorhii Tykhyi, said the Kremlin’s aim was to force the IAEA staff to travel from Russia to the nuclear facility in south-eastern Ukraine.
