Story by Jon Shelton (with dpa, Reuters)
Ukrainian drones rained down on numerous military, energy and civilian infrastructure sites deep inside Russia on Sunday, killing at least eight people overnight.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces downed 635 drones over the course of the attacks.
Two people were killed in the city of Engels on the Volga River when drones hit residential buildings. Another apartment complex in nearby Saratov City was also damaged.
Three people were reported killed and two injured in the Udmurtia region (1,300 kilometers from Ukraine), and another three killed and five injured in Belgorod according to local officials.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday said Kyiv had targeted an oil refinery in Saratov and a military base that is home to Russian long-range bombers in Engels.
Zelenskyy said the attacks were his country’s answer to Russian aggression and thanked Ukrainian forces for taking the war “back to where it came from.”
Kyiv said fires had damaged both sites and that its forces had also struck an oil depot in the western Kaluga region.
Unverified video uploaded to social media sites purported to show fires burning at the Saratov oil facility.
Why is Ukraine targeting Wildberries warehouses?
Ukraine again targeted the online retailer Wildberries in its attacks, striking a logistics warehouse in Samara — more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) from Ukraine’s front-line positions.
Sunday’s attacks on Wildberries were just the latest onslaught on the retail giant, which Kyiv says aids Russia’s military.
Kyiv has attacked nearly a dozen Wildberries warehouses since July 18.
No casualties were reported at the facility and local management said that a fire at the site had been brought under control.
Although the number of drones that Russia claims to have downed cannot be confirmed, the figure is indicative of the scale of Kyiv’s effort to strike Russia deep inside its own territory as it defends itself against an army that launched a full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
The Wildberries attacks are seen as an attempt to bring President Vladimir Putin’s war home to Russia’s citizens, applying pressure to the country’s already anaemic economy in hopes of finally ending Moscow’s ongoing invasion.
Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
Author: Jon Shelton (with dpa, Reuters)
