Indian-origin billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s ArcelorMittal mining and metallurgical complex in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine’s largest integrated steel unit, came under a Russian missile attack. The strike, which followed a Ukrainian drone barrage on Russia, killed two people, injured 14 workers and forced a partial halt to production after damaging core energy and blast-furnace operations.
Ukraine earlier launched hundreds of drones across Russia, killing at least six people in one of Kyiv’s largest aerial attacks of the war. Moscow regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov described the assault as “one of the most massive drone attacks in recent memory”. Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had intercepted 822 drones across the country overnight.
An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, Vorobyov said. He added that another Ukrainian attack sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse, belonging to Russia’s largest online retailer and a company controlled by the country’s richest woman, billionaire Tatyana Kim, in the town of Podolsk.
Around 600 drones were detected heading towards the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of them destroyed over the Moscow region.
Five Killed In Rostov Drone Attack
Another drone attack targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local Governor Yury Slyusar said. The attack, involving more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire.
Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russia this year, using long-range missiles and swarms of drones to target military industries and energy facilities.
It has also increasingly attacked logistics giant Wildberries’ depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise. The attacks have brought the war home to the Russian public nearly four-and-a-half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
With fighting on the front at a near standstill and talks frozen, the two countries have significantly stepped up long-range attacks deep behind each other’s lines, pushing civilian deaths to their highest levels since the first months of the war in 2022.
Russian Barrage Hits ArcelorMittal Plant
In Ukraine, a barrage of Russian drones and missiles killed two people at ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, on Sunday.
ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine’s largest steel producer, confirmed that one of its sites had been hit in a missile attack and that operations had been partially suspended.
Another strike on Kryvyi Rih on Sunday killed one person.
Strikes also hit other regions, killing two people in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, one in the border region of Sumy and another in Donetsk in the east.
Russian attacks also sparked fires across Kyiv and wounded six people. A blaze broke out at one of the city’s largest book markets, tearing through kiosks near the Pochaina metro station.
In a social media post on the overnight raid, Zelensky said that “wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles, they strike civilian infrastructure.”
Over the past week, he said, Ukrainian cities had been pummelled by “more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles,” as he renewed his appeal to allies for more air defence.
Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed it had targeted a metallurgical plant in Kryvyi Rih and several military-industrial sites in Kyiv, including a manufacturing facility for Ukraine’s Flamingo missiles. The domestically produced missiles are increasingly key to Ukraine’s long-range attacks on Russia, with Zelensky announcing last week that Kyiv had used the weapons to attack a rocket research and production centre in Samara, approximately 900 km from the Ukrainian border.
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Spanish Fighter Jet Downs Drone Over Romania
Romania’s Ministry of National Defence, meanwhile, said a Spanish Air and Space Force F-18 fighter jet shot down a drone that had entered Romanian airspace. Surveillance systems detected the drone entering the NATO member’s airspace at 4.44 am on Sunday, the ministry said, about 24 km north of the eastern city of Galati, near the border with neighbouring Moldova.
Moldova is a landlocked country between Ukraine and Romania.
The spate of drone incidents comes weeks after Romanian pilots shot down three drones over three days as Russia intensified attacks against Ukraine near the border. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Romania has reported dozens of drone incidents, including some in which drones crashed and exploded on its territory.
