Ukraine war latest: Kyiv’s drones fly record 1,100 miles to strike Russian bombers

A utility infrastructure facility in the Voronezh region caught fire briefly from the falling debris of a destroyed Ukraine-launched drone, the governor of the southwestern Russian region that borders Ukraine said on Monday.

“The fire has already been extinguished,” Alexander Gusev, the governor, said on the Telegram messaging app. “According to preliminary information, there are no injuries.”

Russia claims its forces have captured two villages in eastern Ukraine, while five civilians were killed by Russian shelling in the wider Donetsk region.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky did not confirm the loss of the villages but admitted his troops were under pressure in the region.

“It is extremely challenging in the Donetsk directions, and it is in the Pokrovsk direction that there have been the biggest number of Russian assaults these weeks – the most intense enemy attacks are precisely there,” he said.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had taken control of two neighbouring villages, Prohres and Yevhenivka, some 30km (19 miles) east of Pokrovsk.

The day before, Moscow claimed the nearby village of Lozuvatske, one of nearly a dozen it says it has captured in the province this month.

Five civilians died and 15 more suffered wounds following Russian strikes in the Donetsk region on Saturday and overnight, local governor Vadym Filashkin reported on Telegram o Sunday.

Shortly later, other Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling wounded more civilians, including children, in the east and south.

Ukrainian forces claimed on Sunday that they struck an oil depot in southern Russia that supplies the Kremlin’s troops.

Ukraine‘s General Staff said in a statement that Kyiv’s security services were responsible for a drone strike in Russia’s southern Kursk region.

The depot was a key military facility that used to meet the needs of the Russian military, and contained 11 tanks with a total volume of 7,000 cubic metres (about 247,202 cubic feet), adding the attack prompted “powerful explosions and a fire — probably involving containers with oil products”.

“The defence forces continue to take all measures to undermine the military and economic potential of the Russian occupiers and force the Russian Federation to stop its armed aggression against Ukraine,” the statement said.

The Ukrainian military’s statement came after Russia’s defence ministry said seven Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over Russian territory, while a regional official said a drone strike set fire to the oil depot in the Kursk province.

Firefighters were battling the blaze on Sunday morning after three fuel tanks went up in flames, according to acting regional governor Alexey Smirnov.

Mr Smirnov said nobody was hurt. The Kursk region lies on the border with Ukraine‘s Sumy province where Ukraine has in recent months repeatedly targeted various sites, including oil depots and other military infrastructure, inside Russian territory, with drones and other weapons.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit Ukraine next month, a local media report said, his maiden visit to the war-torn country since Russia began its invasion and just weeks after he visited Moscow.

Diplomats in the two countries are in talks to finalise the date sometime during the last week of August, sources said, according to The Times of India newspaper.

A visit would represent an important step in India’s balancing act as New Delhi tried to maintain cordial ties with the West as well as with its Soviet-era ally Russia.

India has refrained from directly blaming Russia while urging the two nations to resolve their conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.

The visit would be almost a month after Mr Modi met Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin and told him that the death of innocent children was “painful and terrifying” without mentioning the war.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed unhappiness over Russia Modi’s visit, calling it a “huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts” to see him hug “the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day”.