KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russia thwarted an assault by 20 Ukrainian drones focusing on Moscow-annexed Crimea in a single day, the Russian Defense Ministry mentioned Saturday.
Fourteen drones had been shot down by Russian air defenses and an additional six had been jammed electronically, the ministry mentioned in a Telegram publish. No casualties or harm had been reported. Kyiv officers neither confirmed nor denied Ukraine’s involvement within the assaults.
As movies circulated on Russian social media Saturday showing to point out smoke rising above a bridge linking Russia to Crimea, the annexed peninsula’s Moscow-appointed governor, Sergei Aksyonov, reported that Russian air protection had additionally prevented an assault there by taking pictures down two Ukrainian missiles.
The bridge was not broken, he mentioned, though site visitors was briefly halted. An adviser to Aksyonov, Oleg Kryuchkov, claimed that “a smoke screen was put up by special services.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the tried assault on the Crimean bridge. The ministry mentioned in an announcement that such “barbaric actions” by the Armed Forces of Ukraine “will not go unanswered.”
Shortly after reporting the downing of the 2 Ukrainian missiles, Aksyonov mentioned Russian air protection had shot down one other missile over the Kerch Strait.
The bridge connecting Crimea and Russia throughout the Kerch Strait carries heavy significance for Moscow, each logistically and psychologically, as a key artery for army and civilian provides and as an assertion of Kremlin management of the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.
Last week, a Ukrainian sea drone hit a Russian tanker close to the bridge, whereas an assault on the bridge final month killed a pair and severely wounded their daughter, leaving a span of the roadway hanging perilously. The harm gave the impression to be much less extreme than that brought on by an assault in October, but it surely once more highlighted the bridge’s vulnerability.
The tried drone and missile assaults observe three consecutive days of drone assaults on the Russian capital, Moscow. Firing drones at Russia, after greater than 17 months of struggle, has little obvious army worth for Ukraine however the technique has served to unsettle Russians and produce house to them the battle’s penalties.
Drone assaults have elevated in current weeks each on Moscow and on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 – a transfer that a lot of the world thought of unlawful.
Elsewhere, Russia claimed Saturday it had regained management of the village of Urozhaine in Ukraine’s easternmost Luhansk area in an in a single day counterattack.
A 73-year-old girl was killed early Saturday morning in Russian shelling of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv area, in keeping with regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
Ukrainian inside affairs minister Ihor Klymenko mentioned a police officer was killed and 12 individuals wounded when a guided Russian aerial bomb hit the town of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s partially occupied southern Zaporizhzhia area. Four of the wounded had been additionally law enforcement officials, he mentioned.
Local officers mentioned explosions rang out Saturday morning within the central Ukrainian metropolis of Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, however that there have been no recognized casualties.
On Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, the town of Odesa opened a number of seashores for the primary time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Odesa Gov. Oleh Kiper mentioned that six seashores had been open, however he burdened that accessing seashores throughout air raid alerts was forbidden.
The strategic port and key hub for exporting grain has been topic to repeated missile and drone assaults – significantly since Moscow canceled a landmark grain deal final month amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories – whereas Russian mines have recurrently washed up on the town’s seashores.
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Associated Press author Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.
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