Russia’s defence ministry said early on Thursday it had downed 11 Ukrainian drones near Crimea overnight, as well as two drones flying toward the capital Moscow. It said two Ukrainian drones were shot down near the city of Sevastopol on the Crimean coast, and “another 9 were suppressed by means of electronic warfare and crashed in the Black Sea”. The ministry said there were no reports of damage or casualties in any of the affected areas.
Ukraine claims to have shot down seven of ten “Shahed” drones launched at it overnight by Russia. Air defence was said to be active in Kyiv region and Khmelnytskyi.
Ukraine’s navy has said a new temporary Black Sea “humanitarian corridor” had started working on Thursday and that the first ships were expected to use it within days. Oleh Chalyk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy, said the corridor would be used by commercial ships blocked at Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and for grain and agricultural products. “The corridor will be very transparent, we will put cameras on the ships and there will be a broadcast to show that this is purely a humanitarian mission and has no military purpose,” he said. The navy said in a separate statement that the risk posed by mines in the Black Sea and the military threat from Russia remained.
Three people are now known to have died after a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia late on Wednesday. Two young women and a man were killed and nine other people were wounded, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday. A video posted by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy overnight showed smoke billowing from burning and badly damaged buildings next to a church. Zaporizhzhia city council secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said the church had been destroyed and about 15 high-rise buildings had been damaged. The authorities received requests from residents of at least 400 apartments to repair smashed windows and damaged balconies.
Six residents of Bilozerka in the Kherson region have been hopitalised after Russian artilerry fire hit people receiving humanitarian aid, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
One person was killed and two were wounded in Ukrainian shelling of the Russian village of Chausy in the Bryansk region, the region’s governor claimed on Thursday.
Russian drones destroyed a fuel depot in Ukraine’s western Rivne region on Thursday, governor Vitaly Koval wrote on the Telegram messaging app. There were no casualties from the attack, he said, standing in front of the burning site in a video.
Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant again lost connection to its last remaining main external power line overnight and was switched to a reserve line, state-owned power generating company Energoatom said on Thursday. Energoatom said that Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was on the verge of a blackout as the reserve line had less than half of the power capacity of the main power line. Additionally, the station’s Russian-installed administration said the Number 4 reactor had been moved from a “hot” to a “cold” shutdown because of signs of a steam leak. Zaporizhizhia nuclear power plant with its six reactors has been controlled by the Russian military since the early days of Moscow’s invasion in February 2022. Both sides have repeatedly accused the other of endangering the safety of the plant.
The co-founder of Russian internet giant Yandex, Arkady Volozh, on Thursday condemned what he described as Russia’s “barbaric” invasion of Ukraine, days after criticism in Russia over his apparent efforts to distance himself from the country. Volozh described himself as a “Kazakhstan-born Israeli tech entrepreneur” on a personal website, drawing some criticism in Russian media and on the Telegram messenging platform for apparently playing down his links to Russia. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and I am categorically against it,” Reuters reports Volozh said in a statement. “I am horrified about the fate of people in Ukraine – many of them my personal friends and relatives – whose houses are being bombed every day.”
Poland is planning to move up to 10,000 additional troops to the border with Belarus to support the Border Guard, the defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, said on Thursday. “About 10,000 soldiers will be on the border, of which 4,000 will directly support the Border Guard and 6,000 will be in the reserve,” the minister said in an interview for public radio. “We move the army closer to the border with Belarus to scare away the aggressor so that it does not dare to attack us,” Błaszczak said. Last week Poland said Belarusian helicopters had violated its airspace and has warned of provocations.
The UK Ministry of Defence has claimed Russian authorities have stepped up efforts to block citizens’ access to virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow people to bypass restrictions on the internet. It notes “VPNs are hugely popular in Russia, despite being illegal since 2017. They allow users to access objective international news sources, including about the war in Ukraine.”
On Wednesday an explosion on the grounds of a factory north of Moscow that previously made optical equipment for the Russian military killed one person, wounded 60 others and left at least eight people unaccounted for, officials said. No official explanation was given for the explosion in the city of Sergiev Posad, which produced a tall plume of black smoke and added to jitters over recent night-time drone attacks on Moscow.
Ukrainian forces have made an attempt to cross the Dnipro river dividing liberated and occupied Kherson, potentially breaching what has for months served as the frontline in the south of Ukraine. Russian military bloggers reported that up to seven boats, each carrying around six to seven people, landed near the settlement of Kozachi Laheri, east of Kherson city, and broke through Russian defensive lines.
The US and Canada imposed new sanctions this week on Belarus over its human rights abuses and support for the war in Ukraine. The new US measures include action against the state carrier Belavia and target a tobacco mogul close to president Alexander Lukashenko as well as 101 officials accused of subverting democracy.
Moscow accused Poland and Finland of threatening its security on Wednesday and vowed a response to multiplying “threats” on Russia’s western frontier from Nato members. “Threats to the military security of the Russian Federation have multiplied in the western and northwestern strategic directions,” defence minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting with military officials. Those risks “require a timely and adequate response,” he added.
