The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ukrainian drone triggers warehouse blasts in Russia
A village in a border region of western Russia was evacuated Sunday following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said.
Social media footage appeared to show rising clouds of black smoke in the Voronezh region while loud explosions could be heard in succession.
Gov. Aleksandr Gusev said that falling wreckage triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.” No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in the Podgorensky district were evacuated, he said. Roads were also closed with military and government officials working at the scene.
A Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press that a strike had been carried out on a warehouse storing ammunition in the village of Serhiivka in the Voronezh region.
“The enemy stored surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, and boxes of cartridges for firearms,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give the information to the media. “It is from this warehouse that the occupiers supply ammunition to their troops in Ukraine.”
The official also said that Ukraine’s State Security Service was behind a drone attack on an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region the previous day. Russian emergency services had reported that falling drone debris had started a fire at the site, which was successfully extinguished Sunday morning.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not address either strike in their morning briefing, but said that air defense systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.