Moscow, June 25, (dpa/GNA) – Ukraine has launched fresh attacks on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, killing at least two people, according to the Moscow-appointed authorities in the region.
Sergey Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, said one of the victims was a minor. He said two other people were injured in the attack, which took place in the area around the city of Simferopol.
Authorities also reported casualties in the Russian border region of Bryansk. The acting regional governor, Yegor Kovalchuk, said a drone struck a car near the village of Solova, killing the 23-year-old driver and a 15-year-old passenger.
Ukrainian drone strikes also sparked fires in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, authorities said. The region’s civil defence headquarters wrote on Telegram that a fire had broken out on the grounds of an oil depot in Poltavskaya due to falling drone debris.
The oil facility had already been hit last week. In the Abinsky District, a fire was also triggered on a factory site by falling drone debris. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the attack on the oil depot on social media. He also said that two refineries in Ufa, in the Russian Republic of Bashkortostan, had been hit.
The head of the republic, Radiy Khabirov, simply wrote on Telegram that a drone attack on the city of Ufa had been repelled.
Debris had fallen in an industrial area, he said, but there were no injuries and businesses were operating as normal. Bashkortostan lies east of Moscow in the south of the Ural Mountains. Russia’s Defence Ministry said 269 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted overnight over Russian territory and annexed Crimea.
While the figures cannot be independently verified, they do indicate the intensity of Ukrainian attacks. The ministry in Moscow does not typically provide details of any damage. In its bid to repel Russia’s full-scale invasion, now well into its fifth year, Ukraine has stepped up its counterattacks, primarily targeting Russia’s oil and gas industry and military installations.
Kiev aims to disrupt the Russian military’s fuel supplies and reduce revenue from the energy sector. Fuel shortages have been reported in an increasing number of Russian regions, with Crimea particularly hard-hit.
GNA