Attacks in Crimea continue
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian authorities reported shooting down Ukrainian drones Saturday in Crimea, while Ukrainian officials said Russian forces pressed ahead with efforts to seize one of the few cities in eastern Ukraine not already under their control. The Russian military also kept up its strikes in Ukraine’s north and south.
In Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Russian authorities said local air defenses shot down a drone above the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol. It was the second drone incident at the headquarters in three weeks and followed explosions this month at a Russian airfield and ammunition depot on the peninsula.
Oleg Kryuchkov, an aide to the governor of the Russian authority in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, also said Saturday that “attacks by small drones” triggered air defense systems in western Crimea.
“Air defense systems successfully hit all targets over the territory over Crimea on Saturday morning. There are no casualties or material damage,” Aksyonov said on Telegram.
Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian governor in Sevastopol, the Crimean capital, said on Telegram that the city’s air defense systems were engaged again late Saturday.
The incidents underlined Russian forces’ vulnerability in Crimea.
A drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters on July 31 injured five people and forced the cancellation of observances of Russia’s Navy Day. Last week, a Russian ammunition depot in Crimea was hit by an explosion. The previous week, nine Russian warplanes were reportedly destroyed at a Crimean air base.
Ukrainian authorities have stopped short of claiming responsibility. But President Volodymyr Zelensky alluded to Ukrainian attacks behind enemy lines after the blasts in Crimea.
Meanwhile, fighting in southern Ukrainian areas just north of Crimea has stepped up in recent weeks, as Ukrainians try to drive Russian forces out of cities they have occupied since early in the six-month-old war.
A Russian missile attack wounded 12 people, including three children, and damaged houses and an apartment block Saturday in the town of Voznesensk in the Mykolaiv region, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said. Two of the children were in serious condition, and one lost an eye, the governor said.
A Ukrainian airstrike, meanwhile, hit targets in Melitopol, the largest Russian-controlled city in the Zaporizhzhia region, about 60 miles north of Crimea, according to Ukrainian and Russia-installed local officials.
The Ukrainian military on Saturday said it had destroyed a prized Russian radar system and other equipment stationed in occupied areas in the Zaporizhzhia region. It was not clear if this referred to the strike on Melitopol.
“Tonight, there were powerful explosions in Melitopol, which the whole city heard,” said the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Ferodov. “According to preliminary data, [it was] a precise hit on one of the Russian military bases, which the Russian fascists are trying to restore for the umpteenth time in the airfield area.”
In the east, Ukraine’s military General Staff said Saturday that intensified combat took place around Bakhmut, a small city whose capture would enable Russia to threaten the two largest remaining Ukrainianheld cities in the eastern Donbas region.
Bakhmut has for weeks been a key target of Moscow’s eastern offensive as the Russian military tries to complete a months-long campaign to conquer all of the Donbas, an industrial region that borders Russia where pro-Moscow separatists have proclaimed a pair of independent republics, in Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
A local Ukrainian official reported sustained fighting Saturday morning near four settlements on the border between Luhansk and Donetsk.
Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai did not name the settlements or mention Bakhmut, which is about 15 miles from the border between the two provinces. Russian forces overran nearly all of Luhansk last month and since then have focused on capturing Ukrainian-held areas of Donetsk.
Russian shelling killed seven civilians Friday in Donetsk province, including four in Bakhmut, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram.
Taking Bakhmut would give the Russians room to advance on the province’s main Ukrainian-held cities, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.