Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv strikes Wildberries again as deadly exchanges continue
Ukrainian and Russian forces traded deadly strikes on Sunday, with Kyiv hitting another Wildberries site and Russian attacks killing at least five in Ukraine. An EU naval mission separately boarded a sanctioned tanker from Russia’s shadow fleet.
Ukrainian drone strikes killed at least nine people in Russia on Sunday, while Russian attacks on Ukraine left at least five dead, officials on both sides reported.
Among the targets was another Wildberries warehouse, this time in the Samara region, roughly 800 kilometres from the nearest Ukrainian military positions. Regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said there were no casualties and that a fire caused by the attack was being extinguished. Ukrainian forces have hit about a dozen Wildberries facilities since 18 July, aiming to disrupt the company, Russia’s largest online retailer, which is often compared to Amazon.
In Udmurtia, an acting governor said three people were killed and two injured in a drone attack. In the border region of Belgorod, three people died and five were wounded, according to the local taskforce. A Ukrainian drone also struck near a playground, killing one child and injuring two, said acting regional governor Alexander Shuvayev.
On the Ukrainian side, Russian strikes killed two people in Dnipropetrovsk region and at least one each in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, local authorities said. A separate strike destroyed a postal terminal in the Kharkiv region, killing a worker, according to Nova Poshta. In the Russian city of Engels, in Saratov region, two people were killed when a residential building was hit, and civil infrastructure was damaged in Engels and Saratov, governor Roman Busargin said.
Ukraine’s military reported that its forces struck the Saratov oil refinery and the Engels military airbase, causing fires at both, and also hit an oil depot in the Kaluga region. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces attacked infrastructure and two vessels carrying military cargo in the port of Mykolaiv, as well as a vessel with military supplies in the Black Sea.
Separately, a European Union naval mission led by Italy intercepted a tanker from Russia’s so-called shadow fleet on Sunday, the second such operation in less than two weeks. The Italian defence ministry said the Toa Payoh, a tanker under EU sanctions, was halted west of the Sicilian island of Pantelleria while sailing from Benin to Istanbul. The vessel had switched to a Cameroon registry only last week, according to a source familiar with the operation.
