FLASH
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A Ukrainian drone attack overnight on an oil depot near the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi has caused a huge fire, as the two countries exchanged attacks.
More than 120 firefighters were trying to put out the flames, said the regional governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, while emergency officials reported that a fuel tank with a capacity of 2,000 cubic meters was burning.
The drone debris hit an “oil tank, which caused a fire,” Kondratyev said on the Telegram messaging app. Sochi, which hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics, is about 400 km from the Ukrainian border.
Videos on social media showed large plumes of black smoke billowing from the facility. The Russian civil aviation authority temporarily halted flights at Sochi airport.
Kiev has repeatedly attacked infrastructure in Russia, which it sees as key to Moscow's war efforts, but attacks in Sochi have been relatively rare.
The attack came as a Russian missile hit a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, according to state emergency services, injuring at least 7 people. In Russia's Voronezh region, authorities said four people were injured in a separate Ukrainian drone strike.
As Moscow rejects repeated calls by US President Donald Trump for a ceasefire, a Russian drone and missile attack on Kiev on Thursday killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150 others, in one of the worst daily casualty tolls in months.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on allies for more air defense systems to counter Russian escalation.
On Friday, Germany said it would soon begin delivering two more U.S.-made Patriot missile launchers, in addition to the three Patriot systems already delivered to Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The Ukrainian air force said Sunday that Russia had launched 76 drones and seven missiles against Ukraine overnight. It said it destroyed 60 drones and one missile, but 16 more and six missiles hit targets in eight locations.
At the beginning of the war, the Mykolaiv region faced frequent Russian artillery and air strikes. Even after Russian forces were pushed back in late 2022, drones and missiles have remained a constant threat.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air units had intercepted 93 Ukrainian drones overnight, including one over the Krasnodar region and 60 over the Black Sea.
Ukrainian authorities said at the weekend they had targeted other sites key to Russia's energy and defense sectors in retaliation for recent deadly attacks on Ukrainian cities.
The week also brought political turbulence for Kiev, as nationwide protests pushed parliament to restore the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies.
Over the weekend, a Ukrainian lawmaker and other officials were arrested after these agencies uncovered a suspected widespread bribery scheme linked to the purchase of drones and other weapons systems.
Vowing to have “zero tolerance” for corruption, Zelensky himself announced the arrests of X. It is believed that this scheme has increased prices by up to a third in state contracts with suppliers.
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