Russia shoots down 35 Ukrainian drones as both sides step up attacks
Russia and Ukraine launched more than a dozen drones at each other’s territory for a second day on Sunday, one of which apparently targeted a Russian military airport, while a Ukrainian civilian was killed after drone debris slammed into his house near the Black Sea.
At least 35 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over three regions in south-western Russia, the Russian defence ministry said in a post on the messaging app Telegram.
A Russian airbase hosting bomber aircraft used in Ukraine was among the targets, according to a Russian Telegram channel critical of the Kremlin. The channel posted short videos of drones flying over low-rise housing in what it claimed was the Russian town of Morozovsk, whose airbase is home to Russia’s 559th bomber aviation regiment.
Vasily Golubev, the governor of Russia’s Rostov province, also reported “mass drone strikes” near Morozovsk and another town farther west, but did not mention the airbase. Golubev said most the drones were shot down and there were no casualties. He did not comment on any damage.
Also on Sunday morning, Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 20 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched overnight by Russian troops in southern and western Ukraine, as well as one X-59 cruise missile launched from Russian-occupied Ukraine in the south.
A civilian was killed overnight near Odesa, a key port on Ukraine’s southern Black Sea, after the remnants of a destroyed drone fell on his house, Ukraine’s military said.
Increasing drone attacks by both sides over the past month come as they are keen to show they are not deadlocked as the war approaches the two-year mark. Russia’s defence ministry on Friday evening said its anti-aircraft units destroyed 32 Ukrainian drones over the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine’s air force on Saturday said it had shot down 30 out of 31 drones launched by Russia against 11 Ukrainian regions the previous night.
Neither side has gained much ground despite a Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in June.
Ukraine’s foreign ministerhas welcomed what he called a sea -hange in Germany’s approach toward his country’s EU membership bid.
In an interview with Bild newspaper, Dmytro Kuleba said that Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, has won “sincere and well-deserved admiration” among Ukrainians for his role in the EU’s decision to open membership talks for Kyiv.
Ukraine has faced strong opposition in its attempts to join the bloc from Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, who has spoken repeatedly of his desire to maintain close ties with Russia.
Scholz said that at an EU summit last week he proposed that Orbán leave the room to enable the summit to launch accession talks with Ukraine, something the Hungarian leader agreed to do.
“What German chancellor Olaf Scholz did at the summit to remove the threatened Hungarian veto will go down in history as an act of German leadership in the interests of Europe. The chancellor has this week won a lot of sincere and well-deserved admiration in the hearts of Ukrainians,” Kuleba told the newspaper.
He also voiced hope that Scholz’s actions would mark a “broader and irreversible shift” in Berlin’s approach towards EU negotiations with Kyiv.
“When I campaigned in Berlin last May to grant Ukraine EU candidate status, my appeals to Germany to take the lead in this process mostly fell on deaf ears. ‘Germany doesn’t want to lead,’ experts and politicians in Berlin told me. I am glad that German political decisions have changed since then,” Kuleba said.