KYIV, Ukraine, Aug 23, 2023 (AFP) – Civilians were killed in attacks in both Russia and Ukraine Wednesday, while Moscow was hit by drones for the sixth night in a row as the war — which is now hitting Russian territory daily — dragged into its 19th month.
Kyiv, which vowed this summer to “return” the war to Russia, has regularly hit Moscow and other cities deep inside Russia with drone attacks.
The latest attacks come as the war grinds on for a year and a half, now bogged down as Kyiv’s troops fight in a counteroffensive.
In the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, authorities said three civilians were killed by Kyiv’s forces Wednesday.
“The Ukrainian forces launched an explosive device through a drone when people were on the street,” Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
The region has been targeted by shelling, drone attacks and occasional cross-border incursions for months.
In Moscow, the drone attack caused no casualties, crashing into a skyscraper and smashing a window.
Drones were also downed outside Moscow — in the Mozhaisky and Khimki districts — Russia’s defence ministry said.
The attack on Moscow came hours after Kyiv said Russian artillery hit two villages near the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman, killing three people and wounding two others.
– Putin blames West –
In the Moscow City district, some five kilometres (three miles) from the Kremlin, emergency services vehicles lined up along a street below a cluster of brightly lit skyscrapers.
Air traffic at Moscow’s Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo airports was briefly halted, the TASS state news agency reported, citing the aviation services.
Emergency services were inspecting the area in the business district, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram.
Sobyanin and the defence ministry said there were no reports of casualties.
In Khimki district, the wreckage of a downed drone had partially collapsed the roof of a private house and damaged a non-residential building, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Authorities said there were no casualties and the Kremlin has played down the attacks, though many in Moscow appear unsettled.
Addressing the BRICS summit by video-link, President Vladimir Putin again blamed the West for the conflict in Ukraine.
“Our actions in Ukraine are dictated by one thing — to end this war, which was unleashed by the West,” he said.
– Teachers killed –
Kyiv said in the early hours of Wednesday that three people were killed in Torske, a small village in the east retaken by the Ukrainian army from Russian forces in October last year.
The Donetsk prosecutor’s office said the victims were two women and a man — aged 63 to 88 — who were seated on a bench when shells hit.
Ukraine also said two teachers were killed when Russia struck a village school in the northeastern Sumy region.
“In Romny, Sumy Region, the Russians destroyed a school and killed at least two educators,” Igor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Telegram.
They were still searching for two more of the school’s employees believed to be under the rubble, he added.
“Three more people were injured,” Klymenko said.
Russian forces entered the Sumy region at the start of their invasion last year but were pushed back by Ukrainian forces.
The region is now relatively far from the front line but has been targeted by attacks, which have increased since Moscow stepped up an advance in the neighbouring Kharkiv region.
– Black Sea attacks –
Both Russia and Ukraine have also ramped up attacks in the Black Sea since the July collapse of a UN-brokered deal aimed at ensuring safe navigation for civilian grain shipments from Ukraine ports.
Kyiv said Wednesday that Russian strikes on its sea and river ports had destroyed 270,000 tonnes of grain in the space of a month.
“In total, 270,000 tonnes of grain have been destroyed in a month of attacks on ports,” Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on social media.
Earlier, it reported a Russian drone hit and damaged grain infrastructure in the southern Odesa region.
Moscow said on Tuesday it had destroyed two Ukrainian military boats in the strategic waterway, including one carrying troops.
Russia also said that it had dispatched two fighter jets to intercept two drones over the Black Sea, without specifying which country had deployed them.
The incidents came after the first civilian cargo ship sailing through the Black Sea from Ukraine arrived in Istanbul last week, in defiance of the Russian blockade.
