KYIV: Ukraine’s security services said on Saturday they had struck a Russian ammunition depot in a border region, as Moscow’s forces claimed yet another advance on the battlefield.

Ukraine also said it had thwarted a “massive” overnight Russian aerial attack that saw drones launched towards the capital Kyiv. The attacks come after a week of intense Russian bombardments across Ukraine that killed at least 55 in the central city of Poltava, and seven in Lviv — hundreds of kilometres from the front lines and close to Ukraine’s western border with EU and Nato members.

A large fire and several explosions were reported overnight in the Russian region of Voronezh, which borders Ukraine, prompting officials to evacuate locals living near the blaze.

Russian anti-air defence systems “detected and neutralised a drone” over the western part of the region, under 150 kilometres from Ukraine, Voronezh governor Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram. “No one was injured,” but when the drone fell it sparked a large fire “that spread to explosive devices and caused them to detonate”, Gusev continued, without providing details of which facility was hit. “A decision was taken to evacuate residents of a village” because of the blaze, he said.

Russian Telegram channels said the fire broke out in a local munitions depot. Ukraine’s SBU security services later claimed it had hit a Russian ammunition depot. A source in the SBU said that Kyiv was targeting “military airfields, ammunition depots and infrastructure facilities” in order to “create a demilitarised zone in the regions of Russia adjacent to Ukraine”. It called them all “legitimate targets”.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2024