Russia and Ukraine have traded deadly overnight drone attacks, killing four people in Ukraine’s southern port city of Kherson and towns along Russia’s southern Black Sea coast, according to regional officials.
A Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk overnight Tuesday into Wednesday killed a child, injured another child and woman, and damaged dozens of buildings, including homes, reported mayor Andrei Kravchenko. A total of eight people in the city were injured, said Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of the Krasnodar region that includes Novorossiysk.
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Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said Ukrainian drones “heavily pounded” the Novorossiysk port, through which “a significant share of [Russia’s] domestic grant exports” pass.
Drone strikes also damaged the Novorossiysk grain terminal, according to the terminal’s owner, Demetra Holding.
“Novorossiysk endured a horrific night,” Kravchenko wrote in a post on Telegram.
Another person was killed when drone debris fell into the garden of a house in the village of Volna, said Kondratyev.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian drones damaged several homes in Russia-occupied Crimea, said local governor Mikhail Razvozhayev.
Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military used jet-powered drones, missiles and unmanned naval systems to target a naval base in Novorossiysk, hitting “air defence positions, piers and seaport infrastructure”.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it downed and destroyed a total of 502 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Al Jazeera’s Audrey MacAlpine, reporting from Kyiv, reported that Ukraine’s latest drone blitz appears to be a continuation of a more than month-long campaign zeroing in on Russian vessels in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
“In the same way that Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign has moved beyond just oil refineries in Russia, hitting things like [the retailer] Wildberries, we’re seeing a similar thing with its naval campaign,” said MacAlpine.
Reuters, citing oil industry sources on Wednesday, reported that Russia’s Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery in the Orenburg region ceased processing on August 11 after a fire following a Ukrainian drone attack.
Two killed in Ukraine’s Kherson
In Ukraine, a Russian attack using Shahed drones killed two people and injured at least two others, including an elderly woman, according to the head of the region’s military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin.
In Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian attack triggered a blaze at a shopping mall, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov. He shared pictures and a video of a building on fire.
The attack cut off power for some 1,200 consumers in Zaporizhzhia, Fedorov added.
A separate Russian attack on Odesa, Ukraine’s largest seaport, damaged infrastructure there, said the head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak.
Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed it hit a fuel depot in the port of Odesa, which it said was used to supply the Ukrainian army. Elsewhere, the ministry said its forces had taken control of the village of Vodiane, in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
Moscow has recently intensified strikes on Ukraine’s food, agriculture and warehouse facilities, in response to Kyiv’s attacks on Russian energy, port and logistics hubs.
Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Kyiv had handed proposals to US negotiators for a plan to end the war, which started with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
According to Ukrainian officials quoted by The Financial Times, Kyiv has also committed to halting drone strikes on oil tankers using Russia’s port of Novorossiysk after a request at the end of last month from United States Vice President JD Vance.
Talks to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022, have largely stalled since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran.
Ukraine has repeatedly called for a ceasefire after years of fighting. Russia says it wants a settlement, but any solution must involve Ukraine fully ceding four regions Moscow claims, as well as resolving the conflict’s “root causes”.