Russia came under attack from Ukrainian drones Friday night and into Saturday morning, the defence ministry in Moscow said. It claimed there were 50 Ukrainian UAVs detected: 26 over the Belgorod region, 10 over Bryansk, eight over Kursk; two over the Tula region and one each over the Smolensk, Ryazan, Kaluga and Moscow regions.
Various reports suggested Ukraine mounted a wave of attacks on Russian electrical and petrochemical facilities. One of the attacks left an oil facility burning in Kardymovo – about 100km from the Ukrainian border inside Russia’s Smolensk oblast, the region’s governor said on Saturday morning.
Russian officials said Ukrainian drones also attacked an electrical substation in Bryansk oblast, about 50km inside Russia. Unconfirmed videos and pictures online showed a large fire. In line with Moscow’s usual information tactics, the ministry claimed all the drones were shot down, while local officials said any damage was only done by falling debris from the intercepted UAVs. There was no independent confirmation.
Ukraine said it shot down a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber from a distance of 308km (191 miles) after it took part in a long-range airstrike that killed eight people including two children in Dnipro. “I can only say the plane was hit at a distance of 308km, quite far away,” said Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military spy agency, the GUR.
An intelligence source told Reuters the plane was hit with a modified S-200 Soviet-era long-range surface-to-air missile system. Unconfirmed social media footage showed a warplane with its tail on fire spiralling towards the ground. The Russian defence ministry confirmed the crash in Russia’s southern Stavropol region but claimed it appeared to have been caused by a technical malfunction. Four aircrew ejected with one dead, two rescued and another missing, the Russian regional governor said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, visited the site of the strike in Dnipro and again called on Ukraine’s allies to rush in more air defences. Zelenskiy said Russian missiles also struck the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi in the southern Odesa region on Friday afternoon, destroying grain storage facilities and the food inside.
In the US, the House of Representatives has pushed ahead through procedural hurdles towards passing a foreign aid package that includes $61bn for Ukraine, Joanna Walters writes. The House is expected to vote on Saturday on the legislation. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic party leader in the Senate, has told senators to be prepared to return this weekend if the package passes the House and goes back to the Senate. If passed by the Senate, it must be signed into law by president Joe Biden – after which the US would ship arms to Ukraine “right away”, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters on Friday.
More than half of an international £900m military fund for Ukraine run by the British Ministry of Defence has not been used because of bureaucratic delays in handing out contracts, Daniel Boffey reports. Critics claim slow provision of weapons to the frontline by the International Fund for Ukraine, with just £404m spent and ministers admitting some of the equipment is not expected to reach Ukraine until spring next year.
The fund was set up in August 2022 and was designed to be “flexible” and “low-bureaucracy”. Delays are said by MoD officials to have been caused by a need to assess each of the huge number of defence companies that have tendered for contracts. An MoD spokesperson said: “Thousands of responses have been received from industry to International Fund for Ukraine requirements, each of which have had to be individually reviewed. We make no excuses for having made sure this was done properly and in a way that most effectively helps Ukraine.”
