Drones hit Moscow, Kyiv struck for third day
Published on: Thursday, June 01, 2023
By: AFP
A specialist inspects the damaged facade of a multi-storey apartment building after a drone attack in Moscow. Eight drones were used in the attack, five of them were downed and three disabled.
Moscow: A swarm of drones hit Moscow in an unprecedented attack, while Russian drones struck Kyiv for a third straight day as Ukraine gears up for a major offensive against Russian forces.The Russian defence ministry blamed Kyiv for the attacks that saw three drones crash into residential buildings in Moscow.
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Officials said no one was seriously injured and there was only “minor” damage to buildings.
The Russian defence ministry said that eight drones were used in the attack, adding that five of them were downed and three disabled.
Of the three that hit residential buildings, two crashed into high-rises located in Moscow’s affluent southwest, while a third damaged a residential building in a suburb of the capital.
The other drones fell outside Moscow. Some of the debris was found around 15 kilometres from President Vladimir Putin’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence.
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One video shared on social media showed an explosion followed by a column of smoke rising into the sky.
Russia will evacuate hundreds of children from villages on its border with Ukraine given a “worsening situation” in the western Belgorod region, intensely shelled for days, authorities said Wednesday.
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Belgorod has seen near daily attacks on areas near the border and last week was the scene of a dramatic armed incursion from Ukraine.
“The situation in (the border village of) Shebekino is worsening,” regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
“We are starting today to evacuate children from the Shebekino and Graivoron districts,” Gladkov said, referring to the most affected border areas.
“Today, the first 300 children will be taken to Voronezh”—a city around 250 kilometres (155 miles) further into Russia.
Also on Wednesday, authorities in the southern Krasnodar region said a drone hit the Ilsky oil refinery, without causing damage or casualties.
At least five people were killed and 19 wounded in a night bombardment in Ukraine’s Lugansk region, its Russian administrators said Wednesday, blaming the Ukrainian army for the attack.
The Russians did not specify whether the killed and wounded were civilians or military personnel, although they had listed four workers killed in an earlier toll.
“The enemy fired four rockets” from one of the HIMARS mulitple launchers delivered to Kyiv by the US, the administration said.
The region of Lugansk, which neighbours Donetsk, is mostly occupied by the Russian army and is one of four Ukrainian territories Moscow claimed to have annexed in September.
Moscow was on Tuesday targeted in an unprecedented drone attack, which Putin said was a Ukrainian attempt to “frighten” Russians.
Attacks on Russian territory have increased in recent weeks as Kyiv says it is preparing a major counter-offensive to push back Moscow’s forces.
Russia on Wednesday claimed it destroyed the last major warship of the Ukrainian naval forces, which it said was stationed in the southern port of Odesa.
“On May 29, a high-precision strike by the Russian Air Force on a ship anchorage site in the port of Odesa destroyed the last warship of the Ukrainian Navy, the ‘Yuri Olefirenko’,” the Russian army said in its daily briefing.
The EU agriculture commissioner said Tuesday that it is necessary to extend restrictions on grain imports from Ukraine until at least the end of October, despite fierce opposition from Kyiv.
The restrictions—which have also caused a rift among European Union members—followed complaints from eastern EU countries that a surplus of Ukrainian grain was driving down local prices and impacting on local farmers.
The EU eventually made an agreement with the five states involved—Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia—to allow them to block the import of grain from Ukraine.
European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski said at a press briefing Tuesday that “we need to prolong, best to the end of the year but minimum to the end of October”.
“The problem... is that there is more grain in the storage of the frontline (countries) than in Ukraine and this is the reason that we should prolong this temporary import ban for improvement of the situation in the frontline countries,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already slammed the export restrictions on his war-torn country as “completely unacceptable”.
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