Russia says repelled 'massive' Ukrainian drone attack

 

Rescuers push out a fire in the destroyed Sports Palace after missile strikes in Kharkiv on September 1, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [AFP]

Russia said Sunday it had repelled a "massive" Ukrainian drone attack on energy and fuel plants in Moscow and 14 regions, one of the largest such strikes since the start of the two-and-a-half-year conflict.

Ukraine has repeatedly sent drones to strike Russia's energy infrastructure in recent months, in retaliation for Moscow's missile attacks that have hugely damaged its own energy network since the Kremlin first sent troops into the country in February 2022.

"It is entirely justified for Ukrainians to respond to Russian terror by any means necessary to stop it," President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Facebook.

The latest barrage saw 158 drones fired, most of them downed over the regions of Kursk, Bryansk, Voronezh and Belgorod which border Ukraine, Russia's defence ministry said.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that 10 drones had targeted various areas in and around the capital.

One of them sparked a fire at an oil refinery within the city limits of the sprawling capital, he said, while a coal-fired power plant near the city was also reported to have been targeted.

The barrage came just days after Russia sent over 200 drones and missiles at Ukraine's energy infrastructure, in one of the largest such attacks.

It also comes nearly a month since Ukraine went on the offensive in Russia's Kursk region, crossing the border and capturing Russian territory as Russian troops continued their slow but steady advance in eastern Ukraine.

Sobyanin said Sunday morning that a downed drone had hit a "technical building" at the Moscow oil refinery, owned by the Gazprom energy giant, in the southeast Kapotnya area of the capital.

The mayor later said, "The fire at the oil refinery has been localised and there is no threat to people or the plant's operation".

In the Tver region northwest of Moscow, five drones targeted the area of Konakovo power plant and caused a fire that was swiftly extinguished, according to Governor Igor Rudenya.

'Most massive' attack

A local official in the Moscow region, Mikhail Shuvalov, said on Telegram that three drones had also tried to hit the Kashira coal-fired power station, but that "there were no victims nor damage and it did not catch fire".

Russian military blogger Rybar, who is followed by more than 1.3 million people, wrote, "The night attack by the Ukrainian armed forces was the most massive since the start of the special military operation" in 2022.

In the city of Belgorod and the surrounding area, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said 11 were injured in a later Ukrainian attack on Sunday afternoon, among them two children and there was widescale damage to blocks of flats and houses.

In the Donetsk region, Russia is advancing towards the city of Pokrovsk and Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrsky wrote on Facebook that the "situation is difficult in the direction of the enemy's main offensive".

At least three people were killed and nine injured by shelling of the Donetsk region near the town of Kurakhove, the regional governor Vadym Filashkin said.

Russia on Sunday claimed control of two new villages in the region: Ptyche near Pokrovsk and Vyyimka further northeast.

'Terrorising Kharkiv'

On Sunday afternoon, Russia struck Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv with missiles, injuring 47 people including seven children, according to the emergency services.

National police said Russia injured 21 at a shopping centre and 18 at a sports centre, of whom five were children.

The attack caused "large-scale destruction and fires," the emergency service said and "people could be under the rubble".

An AFP photographer saw rescuers working in the rubble of the destroyed Sports Palace centre with a dog, looking for survivors and bringing out one of those injured on a stretcher.

Outside the shopping centre, there were burnt-out cars and facades torn off buildings and flames from a damaged gas pipe.

Prosecutors said Russia fired two Iskander-M ballistic missiles at a shopping centre and three at the Sports Palace while three other missiles hit near the sports centre.

The energy ministry said that Russia had attacked an energy facility in the city, without giving details.

Kharkiv also came under attack Friday with an aerial strike killing seven including a teenage girl.

"Russia is once again terrorising Kharkiv, striking civilian infrastructure and the city itself," Zelensky wrote on Facebook, appealing for more weapons to fend off attacks.

He urged global leaders to show the "courage to give Ukraine everything it needs to defend itself".