Russia strikes Ukrainian drone industry and Black Sea ports – MOD
Russia carried out precision strikes overnight on Ukrainian military-industrial and port infrastructure, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
According to the ministry, the strikes targeted defense industry facilities in Kiev involved in producing and storing drones, as well as infrastructure at the ports of Odessa and Yuzhny used to receive and store military cargo and fuel.
Five fuel storage tanks intended to supply the Ukrainian military were also hit.
Among the targets in Kiev was an industrial site operated by logistics company Rapid PJSC, which the ministry said assembles and stores medium- and long-range fixed-wing UAVs and foreign-made components used in their production.
Another target was a drone storage facility belonging to the Kiev-1 radio-electronics enterprise, which assembles and stores AN-196 Lyuty long-range strike drones, Leleka-100 reconnaissance drones, and components for other UAV models.
The ministry also said Russian forces struck a cargo ship transporting military supplies for Ukraine en route to the Port of Chornomorsk, as well as a high-speed Ukrainian special forces boat near Snake Island in the Black Sea.
Russia has intensified long-range strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial and logistical infrastructure in recent weeks, describing it as retaliation for terrorist attacks on Russian civilian and energy infrastructure, which have intensified as Ukraine suffers battlefield setbacks.
Earlier this month, Russia announced the liberation of the Ukrainian stronghold of Konstantinovka in northwestern Donbass, opening the way toward the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, the last two major cities in the region still held by Ukrainian forces.
The overnight strikes followed another Ukrainian drone raid on Russia. The Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted and destroyed 375 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over 18 Russian regions, including Moscow Region.
A day earlier, a Ukrainian drone struck a service vehicle at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) near Energodar, killing the chief engineer and driver. Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev described the strike on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant as a deliberate terrorist attack by the “Kiev regime,” noting similar attacks killed 13 people and wounded 48 in just over two months.
Moscow called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to condemn the attack, but the agency stopped short of assigning responsibility, calling instead for an “immediate end to all attacks on or near nuclear sites and their staff.”
