A fleet of Ukrainian drones has targeted Russia, causing explosions and fires at fuel refineries, cutting electricity supplies and reaching Moscow and beyond, according to reports from Russian authorities. Fuel facilities in Oryol and Nizhny Novgorod regions were on fire on Tuesday after attacks, local governors and media said.
Nizhny Novgorod is nearly 1,000km from the Ukrainian border and lies about 400km to the east of Moscow. One drone flying towards Moscow was downed over the Ramensky district near the capital, said Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin.
Oryol’s governor, Andrey Klychkov, said Ukraine launched a drone attack on a fuel facility, while RIA cited emergency services as saying one petroleum tank was on fire. Oryol is about 150 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Power was cut off to seven settlements in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine after a drone dropped a bomb, said Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor.
Russian troops’ advance in Ukraine “has been stopped”, according to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, with the situation along the front at its best in three months. Zelenskiy, in an interview with France’s BFM television, said Ukraine had improved its strategic position despite shortages of weaponry, but suggested the situation could change without new supplies.
It comes after Russia captured Avdiivka and then advanced into nearby villages. In the past week, Ukraine’s military has been saying that Russian forces are no longer advancing and Ukrainian troops have improved their position. Zelenskiy noted Ukrainian shootdowns of Russian warplanes and sinking of targets in the Black Sea. “We have recovered in our situation in the east.”
“We have had some difficulties because of shortages of artillery shells, an air blockade, Russian long range weapons and the great intensity of Russian drone attacks,” Zelenskiy added. Russian forces enjoyed superiority in terms of long range weapons, “an advance of 20km on us”. Kyiv’s forces had built up three lines of fortifications over more than 1,000km of territory.
Zelenskiy also said he believed a Russian missile strike in Odesa while he and the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, were visiting last week showed that Vladimir Putin had “taken leave of the real world … Was he aiming at me? That’s not what matters now. When you make a cruise missile strike a few hundred metres from a European leader, I think you have to be truly ill.”
The EU is pushing to fast-track to Ukraine €2bn-€3bn this year in profits from frozen Russian assets, the Financial Times has reported.
China is providing economic and security assistance to the Vladimir Putin’s war effort by supporting Russia’s industrial base, according to an annual assessment by US intelligence agencies.
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said that when they met on Friday, Donald Trump told him how he would end the war. “He says the following: first of all, he will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Orban said. “If the Americans do not give money, the Europeans alone will not be able to finance this war. And then the war is over.” When contacted by AFP, Trump’s team did not comment on Orban’s claims.
The US president, Joe Biden, told a campaign event in New Hampshire: “[Trump] was with Viktor Orbán, who talked about democracy being the problem, and telling how much he understood and agreed with him. Come on. I mean, this is not who we are.”
Sweden’s flag was raised at Nato headquarters on Monday, cementing its place as the 32nd member – a development wholly due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, reportedly said she was open to a deal in which London supplies Ukraine with additional Storm Shadow missiles in exchange for Germany backfilling British long-range missile stocks. There is pressure on Germany to supply Ukraine with its Taurus missiles, which can strike further behind enemy lines than Storm Shadow.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, has called for Europe to boost its defence production. CNN has reported that Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery shells a month, or about 3 million a year, in contrast to the US and Europe, which together can generate about 1.2m annually for Ukraine, according to a senior European intelligence official.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on reports that Nikolai Yevmenov, the head of the Russian navy, had been replaced. The Izvestia newspaper said Alexander Moiseyev, previously commander of Russia’s northern fleet, had reportedly been appointed as acting navy chief.
Ukraine summoned the Vatican’s envoy to Kyiv after Pope Francis suggested Ukraine should consider raising “the white flag” against Russia. “Due to the statements of Pope Francis the Apostolic Nuncio was invited to the ministry of foreign affairs of Ukraine,” the ministry said, adding the envoy, Visvaldas Kulbodas, was told Kyiv was “disappointed with the words of the pontiff regarding the ‘white flag’.”
