Russia bombards Ukraine with missiles, drones as payback for strike on fuel tanker in Black Sea

Russia lashed out with a barrage of missile and drone attacks on Ukraine on Sunday, killing six people in retaliation for an attack on an oil tanker in the Black Sea.

Russian forces launched 70 drones and missiles from aircraft over the Caspian Sea, Ukraine’s air force said.

Among the weekend’s targets was a blood transfusion center hit by a guided bomb in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

“This war crime alone says everything about Russian aggression,” Zelenskyy posted on social media. “Defeating terrorists is a matter of honor for everyone who values life.”

Two of the six fatalities were in Kharkiv, while other victims were killed in Russian-held Donetsk and elsewhere, authorities said.

Amid the Russian onslaught, however, Ukraine is seeing “significant results” from U.S. and German air defense systems, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Sunday.

The advanced systems that include U.S.-built Patriot missiles were proving “highly effective,” and Ukraine shot down “a significant part” of Russia’s attacks over the past week, including 65 missiles and 178 assault drones, he said.

Nearly half of the downed drones were Iranian-made Shaheds.

Russia has vowed to retaliate for the Ukrainian drone attack on an oil tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea on Friday, when Ukraine also struck a major Russian port with drones.

An official with Ukraine’s Security Service confirmed that a drone packed with nearly 1,000 pounds of explosives hit the tanker that was carrying fuel for Russian forces. The drone blew a hole in the tanker’s engine room.

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman called the hit a Ukrainian “terrorist attack” on a civilian vessel in the Kerch Strait.

“There can be no justification for such barbaric actions, they will not go unanswered and their authors and perpetrators will inevitably be punished,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova posted on the Telegram messaging app.

Experts say the attacks illustrate the growing capability of Ukraine’s naval forces and the significance of the Black Sea as a battleground in the 18-month-old war.

The Ukrainian attack on the tanker was the second attack on Russian ships in the Black Sea in two days, coming in response to Russia’s attacks on the Ukrainian port of Odesa, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

“Ukrainian naval strikes are likely part of a deliberate interdiction campaign aimed at setting favorable conditions for larger counteroffensive operations,” the Institute said in its most recent analysis released over the weekend.

Former President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would launch more strikes against Ukrainian ports following attacks on its ships and threatened to deliver Ukraine “an ecological catastrophe” in the Black Sea.

“Scumbags and freaks understand only cruelty and force. Apparently, the strikes on Odesa, Izmail, and other places were not enough for them,” said Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, on his official social media accounts.

Russia has been targeting the port of Odesa, where the Ukrainian Navy is based, and Izmail, a major inland port across the Danube River from Romania.

Both countries have stepped up their attacks as Ukraine wages its long-awaited counteroffensive in hopes of dislodging invading Russian forces that have occupied nearly a fifth of its territory, mostly in the southern and eastern regions.

Also on Sunday, a Ukrainian missile caused minor damage to the Chonhar bridge that connects the Russian-occupied Kherson region with Crimea, Russian authorities said.

The bridge is one of three that connect Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014 by Russia, to the mainland. It was attacked twice already in late July.

The attacks are affecting access on and off the Crimean Peninsula, which is important militarily to Russia.

Another of the three links with Crimea near the town of Henichesk was shelled on Sunday, and traffic was halted on the third bridge after Ukraine’s attack on the Russian fuel tanker, authorities said.

Breaking News

As it happens

Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts.

In Ukraine’s eastern Kupyan region, meanwhile, Russian missiles sparked a forest fire, officials said.

Flights at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport were briefly suspended flights on Sunday after a drone was shot down in the city’s airspace. Vnukovo, about nine miles southwest of the city, is Moscow’s second-largest airport.

It marked the fourth attack on Moscow in a month.

In Kyiv, a landmark statue of Mother Ukraine was altered on Sunday to replace a Soviet hammer and sickle with a tryzub, a three-pronged trident that is the country’s official coat of arms.

Talks concerning the war were held over the weekend in Saudi Arabia among senior officials from about 40 countries, including the U.S., China and India, but nothing concrete was decided.

Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said the talks were very productive but did not elaborate. Russia did not attend.

With News Wire Services