Russian officials said a village in the western border region was evacuated following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse.
kyiv, Ukraine — A village in a western Russian border region was evacuated Sunday following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said.
Images posted on social media appear to show clouds of black smoke rising in the Voronezh region as loud explosions are heard in succession.
Governor Aleksandr Gusev said the falling debris triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.” No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in Podgorensky District were evacuated, he added. Roads were also closed and emergency services, the military and government officials were working at the scene.
A Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press that a strike was carried out on an ammunition warehouse in the village of Serhiivka in the Voronezh region.
“The enemy stored surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, as well as boxes of cartridges for firearms,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide the information to the media. “It is from this warehouse that the occupiers supply their troops with ammunition in Ukraine.”
The Russian Defense Ministry did not mention the strike during its morning briefing, but said air defense systems destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.
Authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar province said Saturday that a fire at an oil depot was also caused by falling drone debris. Russian emergency services said the fire had been extinguished by Sunday morning.
The strikes come after a Ukrainian military spokesman told The Associated Press on Thursday that Kiev troops had withdrawn from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that was reduced to rubble by a months-long Russian assault.
Russian forces have been trying for months to gain ground in Ukraine’s industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition. In a joint investigation published Friday, independent Russian media outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces were losing between 200 and 250 soldiers every day in Ukraine.
Military analysts believe that the fall of Chasiv Yar could also compromise crucial Ukrainian supply routes and endanger nearby towns, bringing Russia closer to its stated goal of seizing the entire Donetsk region.
Russian strikes have also targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Kiev authorities announced Saturday that the city had restored two-thirds of its electricity-generating capacity after Russian missile attacks destroyed key power plants.
“A huge amount of work has been done,” said Deputy Head of the Kiev City Administration Petro Panteleev. “The city’s energy facilities, built mainly in the Soviet era, are being modernized and are becoming much more efficient.”
Russia launched two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones overnight Sunday into Monday, Ukrainian air force officials said. All were shot down, but officials did not specify the impact of the missiles.
Eight people were killed in Russian attacks in Ukraine over the past day, according to local regional authorities.
Four people were killed in the Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said, while in Donetsk, Governor Vadym Filashkin said two more people were killed in the cities of Niu-York and Ukrainsk. In Dnipropetrovsk, a 65-year-old woman was killed in a Russian attack in the Nikopol district, while a 47-year-old man was killed in the Kharkiv region, Governors Serhii Lysak and Oleg Syniehubov said in their respective statements.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, 14 people died after a bus collided with a truck, leaving only one survivor, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Saturday night. Among the victims was a six-year-old child.
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Associated Press writer Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report. Full coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
