Ukraine hit a shipyard in Crimea in a missile attack overnight, damaging two navy vessels and wounding at least 24 people, while Russia again targeted Ukrainian port facilities on the Danube river with drones.
(Bloomberg) — Ukraine hit a shipyard in Crimea in a missile attack overnight, damaging two navy vessels and wounding at least 24 people, while Russia again targeted Ukrainian port facilities on the Danube river with drones.
The missile strike sparked a fire at a “non-civilian facility” in the South Bay area of the Sevastopol Shipyard, Russia-installed Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said on his Telegram channel early Wednesday.
The ships will be repaired and returned to service, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Telegram, without giving a time frame. Seven of 10 cruise missiles launched by Ukraine were shot down, the ministry said.
Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, regularly comes under attack by drones or missiles. The bridge linking mainland Russia and the peninsula was partially damaged in July, and a fuel depot in Sevastopol caught fire in a drone strike in April.
Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov said a large assault ship and a submarine were hit at the shipyard, Interfax Ukraine reported. Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk praised Ukrainian pilots for carrying out “wonderful combat work,” according to a Telegram post Wednesday.
Ten Ukrainian Su-24M bomber jets fired as many Storm Shadow cruise missiles on Sevastopol, wrote pro-Russian military blogger Rybar, whose Telegram channel has nearly 1.2 million subscribers, without saying where he got the information. He named the Minsk assault ship and the Rostov-on-Don submarine as the two hit in the strike.
Ukraine’s Izmail region was hit again overnight with a series of Russian drone strikes, Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said on his Telegram channel. Port infrastructure and other facilities were damaged and a truck parking area caught fire.
Six people were injured in the port town of Reni, with two in a serious condition, and one man received medical assistance in Izmail, Kiper said.
Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the two ports were working despite the attacks. The facilities, along with others on the Danube River, have become increasingly vital to Ukraine’s crop shipments since Russia’s withdrawal from a deal to allow grain exports via larger Black Sea ports.
–With assistance from Kateryna Choursina, Vladimir Kuznetsov and Olesia Safronova.
(Updates with Ukrainian Air Force comments in 5th paragraph, Russian blogger in 7th, Ukrainian minister in last)
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