Ukraine launched a series of drone attacks on Russian territory on Friday night. Moscow is trying to minimize the success of the operation, although video footage appears to show that a lot of damage was caused.
As has been the case many times during the war, the Ukrainian attack seemed to focus on Russia’s energy infrastructure. Refineries and oil terminals have already been popular targets in recent months and after the drone attacks, fires broke out in the energy facilities of Bryansk and Kaluga, and in the Smolensk region a fuel tank caught fire due to the remains of a drone.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, no fewer than 50 drones were “successfully” shot out of the sky in eight regions last night. Among other things, 26 drones were shot down above the western Belgorod region, close to the Ukrainian border. Two people from Poroz – according to local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, a woman with a broken leg and a man who was caring for her – are said to have died after one of the explosions caused a fire in their house. Drones are also said to have been destroyed over the regions of Bryansk, Kursk, Tula, Smolensk, Ryazan, Kaluga and Moscow.
Although Moscow claims that all drones were “neutralized” and there was only “collateral damage” from flaming projectiles that landed on Earth, video footage circulating on social media seems to paint a different story. According to witnesses, at least eight explosions were heard at an oil depot in Kardymovo (Smolensk) and facilities of oil companies Lukoil and Neftika were hit.
War correspondents
Russian media are now also reporting two war correspondents who lost their lives in the conflict. This concerns 42-year-old Semion Eremine from the newspaper Izvestia, who was killed in a drone attack in the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine. American Russell Bentley, who also has Russian nationality and worked for Sputnik, also died. That happened in Donetsk, Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russians. He is said to be a spy, but the circumstances of his death are unclear.
Russian missiles
In turn, Russia attacked Ukraine with seven missiles. Two of them – together with three reconnaissance drones – could be shot down by the Ukrainian air force. In the Odessa region, the rockets were able to damage some infrastructure, although it was not immediately clarified which infrastructure was involved and exactly how much damage there was.