Ukraine targeted a key industrial area in southern Russia, while overnight Russian drone strikes continued to cause civilian casualties in northeastern Ukraine.
Ukraine hit a major industrial facility in the Russian city of Volgograd, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday, while a Russian drone strike killed a man in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region overnight.
Ukraine has added her long-range air attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities, aiming to cut Moscow’s war income and make the Russians feel the consequences of the occupation, now in its fifth year.
The campaign, which Zelenskyy has said is aimed at bringing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, has choked Russian fuel supplies and military shipments, hampering Moscow’s battlefield efforts and increasing pressure on Putin, Western officials and analysts say.
Writing in X, Zelenskyy said FP-5 Flamingo missiles hit the Titan-Barrikady facility in Volgograd in southwestern Russia, describing it as a “large industrial complex” where Russia “produces artillery systems and specialized military equipment, including components for missile launch systems.”
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, the facility produces equipment for missile systems, including self-propelled launchers and transport vehicles for the Iskander-M missile system, which it said is “the same system that Russia regularly uses to hit Ukrainian cities.”
Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov confirmed an attack on a business in the region’s Krasnooktyabrsky district, saying 10 people had been injured and taken to hospital. He said production facilities in the country had been damaged, but did not identify the company.
Ukraine’s state security service said on Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces also struck an oil pumping facility in Russia’s Vladimir region that supplies fuel to Moscow, for the second time this month.
The strikes came a day after Ukraine launched what appeared to be one of Kiev’s biggest drone strikes since the Kremlin attack. full scale invasion more than four years ago. The massive overnight strike targeted a dozen Russian regions, Russian-controlled Crimea and the surrounding seas, Moscow’s Defense Ministry said on Friday, noting that Russian air defenses intercepted 660 Ukrainian drones.
Zelenskyy said on Thursday that he had ordered “a 40-day influence operation”, believed to mean an escalation of attacks, aimed “to force (Russia) to end the war” after US peace efforts during the past year it did not give any progress.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine’s Sumy region, a 66-year-old man was killed in a Russian drone strike on a private residence in the region, regional head Oleh Hryhorov said Saturday.
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