A Ukrainian defence source confirmed a drone attack was used to blow up oil storage tanks near the town of Azov in Rostov, southern Russia. Agence France-Presse said the defence source described it as a âsuccessfulâ attack and said it caused âpowerful fires in the installationsâ. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) âwill continue to impose âdrone sanctionsâ on Russiaâs oil refining complex and reduce the enemyâs economic potential, which provides the aggressor with resources to wage war against Ukraineâ.
Video published by Russiaâs emergencies ministry showed thick smoke and flames billowing out of what appeared to be multiple oil storage tanks over a large area. About 200 Russian firefighters and emergency personnel were sent in. The Rostov region sits directly across the border from Ukraine and is home to the operational headquarters overseeing Russiaâs invasion.
A Russian drone attack left a man, 70, in hospital and damaged a multi-storey residential building in Lviv city, Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor, said on Wednesday. It hit the village of Malekhiv within the city district and damaged many windows in other residential buildings, he said. The city is the administrative centre of the Lviv oblast in western Ukraine, on the border with Nato member Poland.
Ukraine said Russian forces were fighting to enter the outskirts of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region. âThe enemy keeps trying to advance to the micro-district Novy in the town of Chasiv Yar,â a Ukrainian military official said in a briefing.
Farther south, the military said Moscowâs forces were also pushing towards Pokrovsk, threatening a key road, which could complicate Ukrainian supply lines.
Ukraineâs air force said it downed 10 Shahed attack drones launched by Russian forces over Monday night into Tuesday.
Ukraineâs prosecutor general accused Russian forces of beheading a Ukrainian serviceman in the eastern Donetsk region. âThe fact of decapitation of a Ukrainian defender was recorded in the Donetsk region,â said Andriy Kostin. He said Ukraine had documented nearly 130,000 war crimes committed by Russia.
National grid operator Ukrenergo said Ukraine would face rolling electricity blackouts throughout Wednesday after Russian strikes on Ukrainian power plants.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Chinaâs support for Russiaâs defence industry was prolonging the Ukraine war and âhas to stopâ. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian earlier urged Nato to âstop shifting blameâ over the Ukraine war after the allianceâs chief, Jens Stoltenberg, accused Beijing of worsening the conflict through support of Russia.
The South Korean defence minister, Shin Wonsik, told Bloomberg News that South Korea had identified at least 10,000 shipping containers suspected to be containing artillery ammunition and other weapons sent from North Korea to Russia. Those containers could contain up to 4.8m shells, Shin said. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is visiting North Korea. âPutin is expected to seek closer security cooperation with North Korea, especially military supplies such as artillery shells that are necessary to seize a chance to win,â Shin told Bloomberg.
Ukrainian officials have already started preparatory work to organise a second peace summit, the Ukrainian presidentâs chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has said after the first conference led by Ukraine was held over the weekend in Switzerland. Yermak said a joint plan needed to be figured out by member states first, a process he expected to take several months.
