UKRAINIAN ATTACKS
Russian media quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Putin had been receiving military reports in recent days of attempts to attack Russian territory in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, including several incursion attempts overnight.
“All attacks were repelled,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
A Ukrainian missile attack killed two people, and a separate drone strike set an oil refinery ablaze on Saturday.
In the Belgorod region where cross-border attacks from Ukraine have become part of daily life, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported the deaths of a man and a woman, and later in the day, one injury, after he said Russian defences shot down 15 rockets on their approach to the regional capital.
Video obtained by Reuters showed fires ablaze and air raid sirens sounding on the empty streets of Belgorod city.
Dmitry Azarov, governor of the Samara region 850km southeast of Moscow, said the Syzran refinery was on fire but an attack on a second refinery had been thwarted.
The fire was brought under control hours later, officials said, but the incidents highlighted Ukraine’s ability to strike hundreds of kilometres inside Russian territory to target its energy industry. Two other big refineries were set on fire earlier this week by drone strikes that shut down half or more of their output.
The Belgorod region’s Gladkov said that, given “the current situation”, schools in much of the region would close on Monday and Tuesday, and that shopping centres in Belgorod city would be shut on Sunday and Monday.
Russia mounted its deadliest attack in weeks on Friday when its missiles hit a residential area in Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 70.
Source: CNA
