Smoke rises after recent Russian air strikes, near a memorial to soldiers who died in World War Two, in the town of Toretsk, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near a front line in Donetsk region, Ukraine July 3, 2024. Image used for representative purpose only.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

A village in a border region of western Russia was evacuated on July 7 following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said.

Social media footage appeared to show rising clouds of black smoke in the Voronezh region while loud explosions could be heard in succession.

Governor Aleksandr Gusev said that falling wreckage triggered the “detonation of explosive objects”. No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in the Podgorensky district were evacuated, he said. Roads were also closed with emergency services, military and government officials working at the scene.

A Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press that a strike had been carried out on a warehouse storing ammunition in the village of Serhiivka in the Voronezh region.

“The enemy stored surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, and boxes of cartridges for firearms,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to give the information to the media. “It is from this warehouse that the occupiers supply ammunition to their troops in Ukraine.”

The official also said that Ukraine’s State Security Service was behind a drone attack on an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region the previous day. Russian emergency services had reported that falling drone debris had started a fire at the site, which was successfully extinguished Sunday morning.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not address either strike in their morning briefing, but said that air defence systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.

The strikes come after a Ukrainian military spokesperson told AP on Thursday that Kyiv’s troops had retreated from a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble under a month-long Russian assault.

Russian forces have for months tried to grind out gains in Ukraine’s industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition. In a joint investigation published Friday, independent Russian news outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces were losing between 200 and 250 soldiers in Ukraine each day.

Military analysts say Chasiv Yar’s fall could also compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and put nearby cities in jeopardy, bringing Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.

Russian strikes have also heavily targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Officials in Kyiv said Saturday that the city had restored two-thirds of its power generation capacity after recent Russian missile attacks destroyed key power plants.

“Colossal work has been carried out,” said deputy head of the Kyiv city administration Petro Panteleev. “The city’s energy facilities, which were built mainly in the Soviet period, are being modernized and become much more efficient.”

Russia sent overnight into Sunday two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones, Ukrainian air force officials said. All were shot down but the officials did not elaborate on the impact of the missiles.

Eight people were killed in Russian attacks across Ukraine in the past day, according to local regional authorities.

Four people were killed in the Kherson region, said Gov Oleksandr Prokudin, while in Donetsk, Gov Vadym Filashkin said another two people had been killed in the towns of Niu-York and Ukrainsk. In Dnipropetrovsk, a 65-year-old woman was killed in a Russian attack in the Nikopol district, while a 47-year old man was killed in the Kharkiv region, Governors Serhii Lysak and Oleh Syniehubov said in their respective statements.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, 14 people died after a bus collided with a cargo vehicle, leaving a single survivor, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Saturday evening. The victims included a 6-year-old child.

Russian air defenses shot down 31 Ukrainian drones during a concerted nighttime attack by Kyiv’s forces on border regions, the Russian Defense Ministry said October 4, even as uncertainty grew over Ukraine’s future access to weapons and ammunition from its Western allies.

The drone attack appeared to be Kyiv’s largest single cross-border drone assault reported by Moscow since it launched its invasion 20 months ago.

Ukraine is pressing on with a slow-moving counteroffensive it launched three months ago, though mounting concerns about replenishing its military stocks cast a cloud over its efforts

Also Read: Ukraine says it downed 29 Russia-launched drones, one cruise missile

Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, sounded the alarm about depleted stockpiles.

With the war of attrition likely continuing through winter into next year, Bauer said of weapons systems and ammunition supplies: “The bottom of the barrel is now visible.”

He urged the defense industry to boost production “at a much higher tempo. And we need large volumes,” he told the Warsaw Security Forum, an annual two-day conference that continued October 4.

The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t provide any evidence for its claims about intercepting Ukrainian drones nor any details about whether there were any damage or casualties.

It also said Russian aircraft thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to deploy a group of soldiers by sea to the western side of Russian-annexed Crimea.

Also Read: Putin marks anniversary of annexation of Ukrainian regions as drones attack overnight

The force attempted to land on Cape Tarkhankut, on Crimea’s western end, using a high-speed boat and three jet skis, the Ministry said.

Moscow’s claims could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

The Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has been a frequent target of Ukrainian attacks. The region has been the key hub supporting the invasion.

Fears over the resupply of Ukraine’s armed forces have deepened in recent weeks.

The Pentagon has warned Congress that it is running low on money to replace weapons the U.S. has sent to Ukraine.

Concern about the commitment of Kyiv’s allies has also grown amid political turmoil in the United States amid the unprecedented and dramatic ouster Tuesday of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Some in the House Republican majority, and many GOP voters, oppose sending more military aid to Ukraine. The U.S. is by far Ukraine’s largest military supplier.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, publicly questioned the motives of what he called “Western conservative elites.”

“Why are you so insistently against… destroying the Russian army, which has been terrifying,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The funding concerns prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to hold a phone call Tuesday with key allies in Europe, as well as the leaders of Canada and Japan, to coordinate support for Ukraine.

The call came three days after Biden signed legislation hastily sent to him by Congress that kept the federal government funded but left off billions in funding for Ukraine’s war effort that the White House had vigorously backed.