Crimean fuel tank on fire after suspected drone attack
A fuel tank was ablaze in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol in what appeared to be a drone strike, the governor said on Saturday.
Reuters reports that the Moscow-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app: “According to preliminary information, the fire was caused by a drone hit.”
Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has come under repeated air attacks since Russia’s full-fledged invasion of its neighbour in February 2022. Russian officials have blamed the attacks on Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
Razvozhaev said no one was hurt in Saturday’s fire.
The situation is under the control of our firefighters and all operative services. Since the volume of fuel is large, it will take time to localise the fire.
Key events
Joe Biden is considering visiting new Nato member Finland to coincide with the military alliance’s July summit in Lithuania, NBC News has reported, citing three US officials familiar with the discussions.
The US network said the White House’s discussions of a potential visit by the US president had been ongoing for several months and remained active, according to the officials, who said no final decision had been made.
Any Finland visit would be for a summit of multiple Nordic countries, not for a bilateral visit, an administration official said.
Toll from wave of Russian missile attacks reaches 25
The death toll from Russia’s aerial attack on cities across Ukraine early on Friday has risen to at least 25, including five children.
Reuters reports that firefighters tackled a blaze at a residential apartment hit by a Russian missile in the central town of Uman and rescue workers clambered through a huge pile of smouldering rubble, searching for survivors and bodies as anxious people stood by.
“My neighbours are gone. No one is left,” said Serhii Lubivskyi, 58, who survived inside a flat on the seventh floor. He was rescued by firefighters from the balcony where he escaped with his wife after the explosion blocked their front door.
Officials said at least 23 civilians were killed, including four children, with an estimated 109 people living in the part of the block that was hit and 27 flats completely destroyed.
Lubivskyi wept as he looked up at the smouldering gaps in the building where adjacent flats had been blasted away.
An elderly woman, her daughter and two grandchildren lived on the ninth floor. They are gone. A man with his son lived on the eighth floor. They are gone. A woman with her daughter lived on the seventh floor. They are gone. A young family lived on the sixth floor, their son was lucky … he is alive.
In the south-eastern city of Dnipro, a missile killed a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman, said the regional governor, Serhiy Lysak. Video released by the authorities showed a blackened hole where a missile had crashed through an apartment window.
Moscow claimed it had targeted locations of Ukrainian reserve troops and had struck them successfully, preventing them from reaching the front. It supplied no evidence to support this.
Crimean fuel tank on fire after suspected drone attack
A fuel tank was ablaze in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol in what appeared to be a drone strike, the governor said on Saturday.
Reuters reports that the Moscow-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app: “According to preliminary information, the fire was caused by a drone hit.”
Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has come under repeated air attacks since Russia’s full-fledged invasion of its neighbour in February 2022. Russian officials have blamed the attacks on Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
Razvozhaev said no one was hurt in Saturday’s fire.
The situation is under the control of our firefighters and all operative services. Since the volume of fuel is large, it will take time to localise the fire.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome back to our coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is Adam Fulton with the latest developments to bring you up to speed.
A fuel tank was on fire in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol in what appeared to be a drone strike, the Moscow-installed governor said on Saturday.
“According to preliminary information, the fire was caused by a drone hit,” Mikhail Razvozhaev wrote on Telegram.
Meanwhile, five children are among the dead as the toll from Russia’s wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine rose to 25.
Rescue workers were searching for survivors and bodies amid the smouldering rubble of a nine-storey block of flats hit in Uman, central Ukraine. The barrage of more than 20 missiles early on Friday is Russia’s first large-scale air strike in almost two months.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, described Uman as “absolutely peaceful” and condemned the attacks, saying: “Only absolute evil can unleash such terror against Ukraine.”
He added: “Our air force managed to shoot down most of the Russian missiles – 21 out of 23. If not for this, the terrorist state would have managed to claim many more casualties, more lives.”
More on those stories shortly. In other news:
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Five EU countries have agreed on a deal to allow the transit of Ukrainian food exports, the European Commission has said, after temporary bans were imposed on the foodstuffs amid protests by farmers. The agreement with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia comes as limits on Ukraine grain’s export channel via the Black Sea necessitate export overland via the country’s neighbours.
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A leaked internal review commissioned by Amnesty International is said to have concluded there were significant shortcomings in a controversial report prepared by the rights group that accused Ukraine of illegally endangering citizens by placing armed forces in civilian areas. The report last August prompted widespread anger in Ukraine, leading to an apology from Amnesty and a promise of a review by external experts.
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Ukraine’s forces are concluding their preparations for a long-expected spring counteroffensive against invading Russian troops and are ready, broadly speaking, the country’s defence minister has said. Oleksii Reznikov told an online briefing on Friday: “As soon as there is God’s will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it.” He gave no date for the start of the counteroffensive, aimed at repelling Russian forces from the east and south, but said: “Globally speaking, we are to a high percentage ready.”
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President Vladimir Putin has said Russia needs to act quickly and as a “cohesive team” to counter the west’s “economic aggression”, adding that Moscow would expand ties with countries in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America.
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A Ukrainian journalist, who formerly worked for the BBC, has been killed fighting on the frontline. Oleksandr Bondarenko volunteered for Ukraine’s territorial defence after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and later became part of the military. Details of how he was killed in action are not yet known, BBC News reports. Bondarenko, known as Sasha or Sashko, worked from 2007 to 2011 at the BBC’s Ukrainian service, broadcasting from Kyiv. His colleagues paid tribute to the “extraordinary” reporter and news presenter.
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A Russian navy vessel specialising in submarine operations was photographed near the sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines just days before the mysterious blasts last September, according to the Danish daily newspaper Information. The prosecutor leading Sweden’s investigation into the sabotage of the pipelines linking Russia to Germany confirmed the existence of the previously publicly unknown photographs.
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The UK has signed a £1.9bn ($2.4bn) deal with Poland to provide the country with a British-designed air defence system. About 22 Polish air defence batteries will be equipped with common anti-air modular missiles (Camms) and launchers as part of the arrangement. It expands on pre-existing defence ties with Poland, where Camms are already deployed with the British army following Russia’s invasion.
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Russia informed the UN’s nuclear watchdog that equipment spotted at Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant would be used to fix a power transmission line that leads to Russian-held territory, the watchdog said on Friday. The planned restoration of the downed power line could heighten Ukrainian fears that Russia is preparing to connect Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, to the power grid of territory that it controls.
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Vladimir Putin has signed a decree giving people living in parts of Ukraine that are under Moscow’s control a route to Russian citizenship – but it also means that those who decline it, or do not legalise their status, potentially face deportation. The decree – which covers Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – sets out ways that Ukrainian citizens living there can start the process of becoming Russian citizens or legalise their status.
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Spain’s foreign ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador over a video shared on the embassy’s social media accounts that falsely portrayed Spanish troops fighting in Ukraine. Spanish media said the video, which has now been taken down, showed what the embassy claimed were Spanish soldiers on the battlefield, set against a clip of Spain’s defence minister, Margarita Robles, saying Spanish troops would never fight in Ukraine.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
