As reported by Ukrainian officials, missile strikes overnight that are believed to have been carried out in response for drone attacks against a Russian tanker in the Black Sea resulted in the deaths of six individuals.
On Saturday night, more than 70 air assault weapons were deployed by the Kremlin against sites in western Ukraine in a volley of missile attacks as retaliation.
In spite of Kyiv’s Air Force initially claiming to have destroyed 30 of 40 missiles and 27 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones, the air force has subsequently revealed that at least six people have died as a result of the ten missiles that managed to escape.
Just hours after similar attacks against the Russian port of Novorssiysk, Ukrainian drones flying over the Black Sea on Friday hit a Russian fuel ship with more than 450 kilogrammes of explosives.
Following the attacks, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, declared: “There can be no justification for such barbaric actions, they will not go unanswered, and they will inevitably be punished.”
The retaliatory attacks, according to Serhiy Tyurin, deputy commander of the Khmelnytsky region military administration in Western Ukraine, arrived in three waves, damaging many structures and starting a warehouse fire.
They may have had Starokostyantyniv’s airstrip as their intended destination, he continued.
Four more people were injured in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, where two of the fatalities happened, while two more people died in Donetsk.
According to reports, a guided bomb also struck a blood transfusion facility in Kharkiv earlier in the day, and shelling in the village of Podoly resulted in the deaths of one 58-year-old lady and one 66-year-old male.
A woman in her eighties was allegedly killed by Ukrainian shelling, and the main building of a nearby university was set on fire and collapsed without any known injuries, according to Donetsk officials nominated by the Kremlin.
A drone was shot down from the nearby airspace on Sunday morning, briefly halting flights from Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, located about nine miles southwest of the city.
Despite failing, it was the fourth attack on the Russian capital in the past month; on July 30, two drones crashed into Moscow’s financial sector after being disabled by local air defences.