On Friday, Ukraine experienced the largest Russian offensive in the past two months, with Russian air strikes hitting several cities, resulting in the deaths of more than two dozen people. At least two people were killed after a Ukrainian air strike hit a village near the Ukrainian border, according to the governor of Bryansk Oblast region in western Russia. Alexander Bogomaz stated that several Ukrainian missiles hit the village of Suzemka, which is located about ten kilometers from the Ukrainian border. “Unfortunately, due to the attack inflicted by Ukrainian nationalists, two civilians were killed,” said the governor of Bryansk Oblast.
“One residential building was completely destroyed, and two other houses were partially destroyed,” Bogomaz added on Telegram. On Saturday, a drone attack caused a fire in a fuel depot at the port of Sevastopol, the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet in the annexed Crimean peninsula. “According to preliminary data, the fire was caused by the impact of a drone,” said Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhaev in a statement released by the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti and quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE. The fire spread across an area of nearly a thousand square meters, but was eventually extinguished by emergency services. The attack damaged fuel in four tanks but did not affect fuel supplies to the city, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, along with the rest of the Black Sea peninsula.
Mikhail Razvozhaev added that the attack caused no injuries and did not pose any danger to civilian infrastructure in the area. In recent months, Russian authorities have reported numerous Ukrainian attacks on the peninsula, mainly with assault drones. This week, Russia’s Federal Security Service claimed to have foiled a bombing attack on the naval hospital in Simferopol, the capital of the peninsula. Prior to the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive, Crimea’s leader Sergey Axyonov ordered the construction of a fortified defensive line between the peninsula and the rest of Ukraine.
The alleged attack in Crimea occurred one day after the largest Russian offensive against Ukraine in the past two months, with Russian air strikes hitting several cities and killing more than two dozen people. In addition to Kiev, there were reports of explosions in Uman, Dnipro, Kremenchuk, and Poltava in central Ukraine, and in Mykolaiv in the south.