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Russia shuts down major airports after drone strikes city complex
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Ukraine war: Footage appears to show moment drone attack hits building in central Moscow
Ukrainian troops have gained a foothold in the southeastern village of Robotyne on the road to Tokmak, deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said.
The liberation of Robotyne, an important regional rail hub occupied by Russia, would be a milestone in Kyiv’s southward drive to reach the Sea of Azov. The next major settlement is the big regional city of Melitopol.
Meanwhile the series of nightly drone attacks on Moscow continued for the sixth consecutive day as Russia said three objects were brought down over its capital in the early hours of Wednesday. Major airports in Moscow again suspended flights, for the second day in a row, after the drones reached the Moscow region.
While no casualties were recorded, one of the downed drones smashed into an under-construction building and damaged windows in the central Moscow City Complex.
The Russian defence ministry has blamed the attack on Ukraine but Kyiv typically does not comment on who is behind attacks on Russian territory.
It comes after Ukrainian saboteurs, coordinated by Kyiv’s military intelligence services, were said to have carried out drone attacks on airfields deep inside Russia – one of which appears to have destroyed a supersonic Russian bomber.
Ukrainian troops have gained a foothold in the southeastern village of Robotyne on the road to Tokmak, deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said.
The village is an occupied rail hub whose recapture would be a milestone in Kyiv’s southward drive to reach the Sea of Azov. The next major settlement is the big regional city of Melitopol.
However, the deputy minister warned that the counteroffensive should not be compared with either Ukraine’s rapid recapture of land in the eastern region of Kharkiv last year or its success in driving Russian troops out of the city of Kherson in the southwest, because each battlefield situation is unique.
“When Kherson was liberated, remember that the armed forces were creating the conditions in order to more or less swiftly liberate it later,” she said.
Russia has appointed a new acting head of its aerospace forces to replace General Sergei Surovikin, who vanished from sight after a brief Wagner mercenary mutiny against the top brass in June, the state RIA news agency reported on Wednesday.
During the June 23-24 revolt, Surovikin, who once commanded Russia‘s overall war effort in Ukraine – something Moscow calls a “special military operation” – appeared in a video, looking uncomfortable and without insignia, urging Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to stand down.
Since the mutiny, which was ended by negotiations and a deal, unconfirmed Russian and foreign news outlets have said that Surovikin was being investigated for possible complicity in the revolt and being held under house arrest.
“Ex-chief of the Russian Air and Space Forces Sergei Surovikin has now been relieved of his post, while Colonel-General Viktor Afzalov, head of the Main Staff of the Air Force, is temporarily acting as commander-in-chief of the Air Force,” an unnamed source told RIA.
Surovikin earned the nickname “General Armageddon” during Russia‘s military intervention in Syria.
He was placed in charge of Russian military operations in Ukraine last October, but in January that role was handed to General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, and Surovikin was made a deputy to Gerasimov.
Russia said on Wednesday it had thwarted the latest Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow but three people were killed in a drone strike near the Ukrainian border.
The governor of Belgorod region, which neighbours Ukraine and has come under frequent attack, said the drone hit a sanatorium in a village. He said two people had died on the spot and doctors had been unable to save the life of the third.
The attempted attack in Moscow was not reported to have hurt anyone and only appeared to have caused minor damage. It was the latest in a surge of similar incidents, and once again forced Moscow’s airports to briefly suspend flights as a precaution.
The Defence Ministry said air defence forces near the capital had shot down two drones over the Moscow region’s Mozhaisky and Khimki districts.
It said a third had been jammed and lost control – but it nevertheless hit a high-rise building under construction in a Moscow business district. The same district, known as Moscow City, was hit twice in three days at the start of the month.
The state TASS news agency reported that glass planes on three floors of the high-rise building had been damaged. Unverified videos on social media showed minor damage from the two other drones which had been destroyed.
Ukrainian air defences shot down 11 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks, the air force said on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian military and local officials said Russia had carried out attacks in the southern region of Odesa and in the Danube River area, which is important for grain exports, causing fires in grain facilities.
The governor of Russia‘s Belgorod region said on Tuesday that three civilians had been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a sanatorium in the village of Lavy, close to the Ukrainian border.
Russia’s logistics will be impacted by the damage to permanent bridges connecting southern Ukraine and Crimea, the British Ministry of Defence said today.
“As of mid-August 2023, Russian forces were continuing to employ pontoon bridges at Chonhar and Henichesk crossing points on the border between southern Ukraine and occupied Crimea. Both permanent bridges sustained damage from Ukrainian precision strikes in early August 2023,” the ministry said.
It added that the pontoon bridges are “unlikely to be able to fully sustain the flow of heavy vehicles carrying ammunition and weaponry to the front”.
“The resulting bottlenecks mean Russian forces are partially reliant on a long diversion via Armiansk, northern Crimea. This is adding further friction to Russia’s logistics network in the south,” the MoD said in its latest intelligence update.
Russian forces have targeted Ukraine’s southern Odesa and Danube River regions, a key area for grain exports, in overnight attacks.
The strikes sparked fires in grain storage facilities, the Ukrainian military and local authorities said today.
“The enemy hit grain storage facilities and a production and trans-shipment complex in Danube region. A fire broke out in the warehouses and was quickly contained. Firefighters continue to work,” the military said on their Telegram channel.
The Netherlands will provide Ukraine a thousand chargers for remote demining, Dutch defence minister Kajsa Ollongren said on a visit to Kyiv.
The announcement coincides with heavily mined Russian defence lines slowing down a Ukrainian counteroffensive to recapture territory seized by Russia since its forces invaded in February 2022.
“There is a decision to provide about a thousand portable chargers for remote demining that can make passageways in engineered barriers,” Ms Ollongren was quoted as saying on the Ukrainian defence ministry website at a meeting with Ukrainian minister Oleksiy Reznikov.
“Now, as I know, you are facing the problem of extremely dense mining of territories,” she said.
One of the drones in Russia fell into a building under construction at the Moscow City Complex, officials said.
Several windows were damaged in two nearby buildings, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, adding that the emergency services were inspecting the area.
The drone was jammed by electronic warfare systems, after which it lost control and collided with the building, the Russian defence ministry said.
The prestigious business towers have been struck by drones twice before
The Russian defence ministry has blamed the attack on Ukraine and said two other drones were shot down by air defence systems in the Mozhaisk and Khimki areas of the Moscow region.
Three people were killed and two were injured as a result of Russian shelling of several villages in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the prosecutor general’s office said on Tuesday evening. According to the prosecutors, all three people, two women and a man, were killed in the village of Torske at around 1850 local time (1550 GMT).
The prosecutors provided no further detail of the attack.
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A member of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade shakes hands with a woman, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Robotyne, Zaporizhiza region
47th Separate Mechanized Brigade/Handout via REUTERS
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