Moscow/Kiev. At least seven people were killed and 21 others injured in drone and missile attacks between Russia and Ukraine overnight. Officials of both countries have given information about the attacks and the damage caused by them.
Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu quoted Russian officials as saying Ukraine carried out massive drone strikes overnight, while Ukraine accused Russia of launching missile and drone attacks on several cities.
Voronezh region governor Alexander Gusev said one person was killed and two others were injured after being hit by drone debris. Two warehouses operated by a large company also caught fire in the Novousmansky District.
According to Gusev, the fire in one warehouse spread to an area of about 16,000 square meters and in another to about 20,000 square meters. Three trucks and a car were also damaged by the drone debris.
These warehouses have been revealed to be the logistics centers of Russia’s leading e-commerce company Wildberries. The company evacuated its centers for security. Later he told that the fire has been extinguished and there was not much damage to the goods.
According to Wildberries, deliveries from the affected centers were halted for a period of time and goods were diverted to other logistics centres.
Yevgeny Soltsev, governor of the Orenburg region, said the fire broke out after debris from a Ukrainian drone fell on an industrial area. There is no report of any casualty in this incident.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that its air defense systems shot down 396 Ukrainian drones over Russia and Crimea. The ministry also claimed that Russian forces targeted the Novaya Poshta terminal in Kiev, a logistics center and a steel plant in Zaporizhia.
Russia alleges that these bases were used for activities related to military supplies and equipment of the Ukrainian army.
Ivan Fedorov, the governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, said the city was hit by a major combined attack using Russian missiles and guided aerial bombs.
According to him, six people died and 19 were injured in the attack. Said that four apartment buildings and several non-residential premises were damaged in the attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russia used North Korean ballistic missiles, Zircon missiles and guided aerial bombs in the attack. He said the attack caused massive damage to civilian infrastructure.
According to Ukrainian officials, the missile attack in Kiev damaged an infectious diseases hospital and several business establishments.
Electricity supplies were affected following attacks on substations in Kherson and Kharkiv. Attacks were also reported overnight in the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv regions.
Zelensky said Russia attacked Ukraine with more than 120 drones, mostly ‘Shaheed’ drones manufactured in Iran. He accused Russia of preparing to escalate the war and appealed to the international community to increase pressure on Russia.
Ukraine’s campaign to target Wildberries’ logistics centers in Russia has also intensified. The campaign began in mid-July and has now spread to many regions of Russia.
Since July 18, Ukrainian drone strikes have targeted more than 15 Wildberries logistics centers. These are said to include the Moscow, Tambov, Leningrad, Krasnodar, Volgograd and Stavropol regions as well as the center of Crimea.
Kiev alleges that some of Wildberries’ logistics hubs play a role in Russia’s military supply chain. At the same time, Moscow and the company say that these centers are purely for civilian and commercial use.