Ukrainian drone hits Russia's Chechnya as Kyiv continues pushback after Moscow bombardment
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian drone struck a campus belonging to Russia’s National Guard Sunday in the Russian region of Chechnya, as Kyiv continues to strike back after a mass air attack from Moscow.
Footage on social media showed a drone swooping low over the Chechen capital, Grozny, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) southeast of the front line in Ukraine, before exploding. No casualties were reported.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov confirmed that the drone had hit a site belonging to the Akhmat Grozny riot police battalion, and said that two other drones had been shot down by air defenses.
Kadyrov pledged revenge on Ukrainian forces and said he had ordered a missile strike against military facilities in Kharkiv in retaliation for the attack. The claim could not be independently verified.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that it had shot down 15 Ukrainian drones overnight in the country’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, as well as over the Black Sea. It did not mention the Grozny attack.
An official in Ukraine’s security service also told the AP on Sunday that Ukrainian intelligence services had conducted a special operation to sever Russia’s logistic fuel supply routes from Ukraine’s annexed Crimea to occupied Zaporizhzhia.
The operation, which took place Saturday, destroyed a locomotive and 40 tanker cars, the security official said. A sabotage operation reportedly blew up railway tracks while the train was moving, before HIMARS rocket launch systems joined the attack.
“As a result, a key railway branch used to supply Russian troops was put out of service for an extended period,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous in order to share sensitive information.
Kyiv’s strikes on Russia over the weekend, which also set fire to a major oil terminal on Saturday, follow a mass bombardment across Ukraine by Moscow Friday. Russia fired 93 cruise and ballistic missiles and almost 200 drones at its neighbor, battering Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Russia’s troops also continue to slowly advance in eastern Ukraine. Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War reported Sunday that geolocated footage placed Russian forces inside the settlement of Kurakhove, which Moscow’s troops had besieged for weeks after surrounding it on three sides.
The push compounds further uncertainty as to how the war might unfold next year, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office next month, sparking doubt as to whether vital U.S. military support for Kyiv will continue.
In an interview published in TIME magazine Thursday, Trump said that he was against allowing Ukraine to hit targets on Russian soil using U.S.-provided weapons.
Meanwhile, Russia launched 108 drones across Ukraine overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said. It said that 56 were shot down by air defenses, while another 49 disappeared from radar after failing to reach their targets. Three more drones returned to Russia, officials said.
Gov. Vitalii Kim said that two people were injured in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv as a result of the attack, which also damaged local infrastructure. ——
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