Russia claimed on Sunday that the US was responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula in which five US-supplied missiles that killed four people, including two children, and injured 151 more. The defence ministry in Moscow said US specialists had set the Atacms missiles’ flight coordinates on the basis of information from US spy satellites, meaning Washington was directly responsible. “Responsibility for the deliberate missile attack on the civilians of Sevastopol is borne above all by Washington, which supplied these weapons to Ukraine, and by the Kyiv regime, from whose territory this strike was carried out,” the ministry said.
One person was killed and three injured in Russia’s Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, when three Ukrainian drones attacked the city of Grayvoron, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Air defences overnight shot down 33 Ukrainian drones over Russia’s western Bryansk, Smolensk, Lipetsk and Tula regions, the Russian defence ministry said Sunday.
A new attack on Kharkiv killed at least one person and wounded 11 on Sunday, according to local officials. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the city was attacked by a guided bomb and that around half of Kharkiv was without electricity because of the strike.
Armed militants attacked two Orthodox churches, a synagogue and a traffic police post in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, killing a priest, a church security guard and at least six police officers, Russian state news agency Tass said Sunday. Dagestan’s ministry of internal affairs said a group of armed men fired at a synagogue and a church in the city of Derbent, located on the Caspian Sea. Almost simultaneously, reports appeared about an attack on a traffic police post in the capital of the largely Muslim region, Makhachkala. Russian media later reported that five gunmen involved in the attack had been killed.
Ukraine’s energy operator Ukrenergo said on Sunday that rolling electricity blackouts would be imposed nationwide throughout Monday because of increased Russian attacks on power stations. Ukraine has had to impose power restrictions since May due to intense Russian attacks. The more severe power outages will start from midnight Sunday and last until midnight Monday, Ukrenergo said
Serbia has sold hundreds of millions of dollars of ammunition to western countries that have likely helped Ukraine’s fight against Russia, President Aleksandar Vucic said in an interview with the Financial Times. Russia and Serbia have traditionally been close. But the Financial Times reported on Saturday that exported ammunition that ended up in Ukraine through third countries is estimated at about 800m euros, a figure that the Serbian president acknowledged in the interview was largely accurate.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog on Sunday called for a halt to attacks on Enerhodar, a town near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station after drone strikes this week hit two electricity substations serving the area.
The plant’s Russian-installed officials accused Ukraine of staging two drone strikes that destroyed one substation, damaged another and cut power to residents for a time. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made no reference to Ukraine but said “Whoever is behind this, it must stop.”
