Ukraine war: Russian drone attack in Odesa region hits Danube port infrastructure, says Kyiv

Russia launched a drone attack lasting three and a half hours on the southern parts of the Odesa region early on Sunday, hitting Danube River port infrastructure and injuring at least two people, Kyiv said.

Ukraine’s air defence systems shot down 22 of the 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia launched on Odesa in the early hours of Sunday, Ukraine’s Air Force said on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukraine’s South Military Command said on social media at least two civilians were injured in the attack on what it said was the “civil infrastructure of the Danube”.

The Danube has become Ukraine’s main route for exporting grain since the collapse of a UN-brokered deal in July that had allowed Kyiv to ship its grain via the Black Sea.

Putin issues apparent threat to West over supply of weapons to Ukraine to strike Russia

---

EU ministers clash with Hungary over blocked aid for Ukraine

---

Ukraine signs security deal with Spain and awaits tanks and air defence missiles

---

‘Significant number’ of centres housing Ukrainians will close under 90-day policy

---

There was no detail on which port facility was hit. The military said a fire that resulted from the attack at the facility was quickly extinguished.

Some Ukrainian media reported blasts in the Reni port, one of the two major ports on the Danube that Ukraine operates. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

The attack comes a day before Russian president Vladimir Putin is due to meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the resumption of food shipments from Ukraine under a Black Sea grain agreement Moscow broke from in July.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, described the assault as part of a Russian drive “to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world”.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, two people were killed and two others hurt during Russian shelling on Sunday on the village of Vuhledar in the Donetsk area. Artillery fire hit eight settlements across the region, Ukraine’s National Police wrote on Telegram.

Traffic on the main bridge linking the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula resumed after a brief suspension early on Sunday, the Russian-installed operator of the bridge said on the Telegram messaging app.

The administration did not disclose the reason for the suspension.

The Crimean Bridge has been a target of increased air and sea drone attacks in recent months. Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 in a move condemned by many western governments as illegal.

Meanwhile, Ukraine intends to increase drone production by this autumn, the Ukrainian defence minister was quoted as saying on Sunday, as the country conducts more frequent drone attacks on Russian territory.

Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory have picked up in recent weeks, with dozens of drones striking Russia at once on some days, reaching as far as the western city of Pskov, 400 miles (600km) from Ukraine.

Kyiv has used aerial drones to attack airfields and aquatic drones to attack ships and the bridge to Crimea.

“I think this autumn there will be a boom in the production of various Ukrainian drones: flying, floating, crawling, etc, and this will continue to grow in volume,” Oleksii Reznikov told the state-run Ukrinform news agency.

He said one reason for the growth of production was that authorities had reduced various regulations and laws.

“So we rewrote regulations... and simplified the processes. And I believe that we also succeeded in that and gave us the opportunity for such a booster. Especially for drone manufacturers who started production from garages,” he said.

Ukraine is significantly dependent on supplies of modern western weapons, but Kyiv has pledged not to use them on Russian territory and for such attacks it uses only domestically produced weapons, primarily drones.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday it had destroyed a total of 281 Ukrainian drones over the past week, including 29 over the western regions of Russia, indicating the scale of the drone war now under way between Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine has attacked several airfields deep inside Russia, the centre of Moscow and military bases both in occupied Crimea and in regions close to the Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian officials normally say little or nothing about attacks on Russian targets, but say that destroying Russian infrastructure is vital for the country’s war effort. – Reuters