Ukrainian drones have hit nine Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tankers in the Sea of Azov, Kyiv’s drone forces commander said on Wednesday. A total of 19 tankers have been hit in the past 72 hours, Robert Brovdi said in a statement on Telegram, as Ukraine intensifies efforts to isolate Crimea.
Russia launched fresh missile strikes on Kyiv in the early hours today, triggering fires and injuring at least two people, officials said. It was the third round of attacks on the Ukrainian capital this week. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said the strikes caused a fire in a storage area and a non-residential building in two areas on either side of the Dnipro river.
The attacks left two people injured, one of whom required treatment in hospital, and prompted an air raid alert that lasted for about an hour. Earlier, a missile strike in the southern port city of Odesa injured 10 people, eight of whom needed to be taken to hospital, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.
The latest strikes came as Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his plea for anti-ballistic missiles at the Nato summit in Ankara where he is expected to meet Donald Trump. Zelensky says Nato should let Ukraine join to ‘make all of us stronger’. President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a fresh appeal for Ukraine to be allowed to join the alliance, saying Ukrainian armed forces are highly experienced and would only boost Nato’s defence capabilities.
Zelensky, who is expected to meet with Donald Trump in Ankara today, highlighted Ukraine’s adaptability and its ability to strike deep inside Russia, hit Moscow’s oil refineries and other energy targets. He said Ukraine’s armed forces are ‘eliminating’ on an average 30,000 Russian troops every month.
Ukrainian drones have reportedly targeted Russia’s largest oil refinery in Omsk, deep within Siberia, in what Kyiv’s military and Russian local authorities confirm was one of the longest-range attacks of the ongoing conflict. The strike this week underscores Ukraine’s expanding reach. These persistent drone assaults are now intensifying fuel shortages across Russia, leading to widespread reports of escalating prices and lengthy queues at petrol stations throughout numerous regions.
Russian forces are trying to counter Ukrainian ‘mid-strike’ drone attacks by camouflaging cargoes and installing powerful jamming systems to disrupt Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system, Ukrainian drone commanders and pilots told Reuters. Kyiv’s development of ‘mid-strike’ drones that can hit targets dozens of kilometres behind front lines accurately and cheaply, and are often flown via Starlink, has transformed the war in Ukraine.
In a concerted mid-strike campaign this year, Ukraine has attacked supply lines, fuel storage facilities, air-defence installations and command centres, disrupting Russian forces’ logistics and causing fuel shortages in Russian-occupied Crimea. But Russia is now developing many ways to try to counter the mid-range strikes, four drone commanders and pilots told a Reuters crew that visited Ukraine’s 422nd Unmanned Systems Regiment at work in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
