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Zelenskyy: Night Attack Damages Navy 08/12 06:35
Ukrainian anti-ship missiles, jet-powered aerial drones and sea drones
blitzed a major Russian naval base on the Black Sea coast in a "unique"
nighttime operation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukrainian anti-ship missiles, jet-powered aerial
drones and sea drones blitzed a major Russian naval base on the Black Sea coast
in a "unique" nighttime operation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said
Wednesday.
Cutting-edge drones developed by Kyiv since Russia invaded more than four
years ago have repeatedly targeted Russian ships in the Black Sea, including
warships and oil tankers. Both countries have Black Sea shorelines.
Ukraine's uncrewed fleet has succeeded in limiting the movements of Russia's
once-dominant Black Sea navy, Kyiv officials say, in one of the country's
biggest accomplishments of the war.
But Ukrainian officials reckon that Russian President Vladimir Putin is bent
on prosecuting the invasion, despite his bigger army's slow and costly progress
on the battlefield and U.S. diplomatic efforts to find a settlement.
Putin is planning "an additional rapid mobilization of several hundred
thousand Russians by the end of the year," Zelenskyy said on social media late
Tuesday, citing Ukrainian intelligence reports.
Those reports have also said recently that Russia is expanding production of
ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, both of which are hard for Ukrainian
air defenses to counter.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is also trying to scale up its weapons manufacturing
through agreements with partner countries, as both countries apparently plan to
fight on.
Ukraine says it hit Black Sea port infrastructure
The Ukrainian military "carried out a unique operation targeting the naval
base in Novorossiysk -- the last major stronghold of the Russian fleet in the
Black Sea," Zelenskyy said in a social media post Wednesday.
The attack struck air defenses, piers and other port infrastructure in the
Krasnodar region city, he added.
Krasnodar region Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said that hundreds of Ukrainian
drones attacked Novorossiysk, Anapa and Gelendzhik and the Temryuk district of
the region overnight.
Russian air defenses downed more than 500 Ukrainian drones, the Defense
Ministry in Moscow said.
In Novorossiysk, an eight-year old child was killed in the attack, and a
person wounded when his house in the Temryuk region was hit later died in
hospital, Kondratyev said. He added that 12 other people in the region were
wounded.
Debris from downed drones fell on the territory of four industrial plants
and 21 residential buildings, according to Kondratyev, but officials gave no
details of any damage.
Novorossiysk is also home to a key international oil terminal. The
Grushovaya oil transshipment complex near Novorossiysk is one of the largest
transshipment hubs in southern Russia for oil and petroleum products.
Last February, the U.S. State Department expressed its displeasure about
Ukraine's attacks on Novorossiysk, saying they have impacted U.S. oil interests
in Kazakhstan.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium operates a pipeline from the Caspian coast
in northwest Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk. The pipeline handles much of the crude
exports from three major Kazakh fields in which major U.S. energy companies,
Chevron and ExxonMobil, have stakes.
In illegally annexed Crimea, air defenses downed 115 Ukrainian drones over
Sevastopol overnight, the city's Russia-appointed head Mikhail Razvozhayev
said, adding that 10 apartment buildings and 25 private houses were damaged.
Russian drone attacks kill 2 and destroy a shopping mall
Meanwhile, Ukraine's air force said Wednesday that Russia fired 138
long-range strike drones as well as an unspecified number of missiles at
Ukraine during the night. Damage was recorded at 16 locations across the
country, it said.
In the southern Kherson region of Ukraine, a large-scale Russian drone
attack overnight killed two people and wounded two others, regional head
Oleksandr Prokudin said Wednesday.
The attacks also destroyed a shopping mall in the southern Ukraine city of
Zaporizhzhia, according to authorities.
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