A Ukrainian security official said an attack was carried out on an ammunition warehouse in the village of Sergeyevka in the Voronezh region in southwestern Russia.
A village in a southwestern Russian border region was evacuated Sunday following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said.
Images posted on social media show clouds of black smoke rising in the Voronezh region, as loud explosions take place.
Governor Aleksandr Gusev said the falling debris triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.”
No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in Podgorensky District were evacuated. Roads were also closed and emergency services, military and government officials were dispatched to the scene.
A Ukrainian security official said that a strike was carried out on an ammunition warehouse in the village of Sergeyevka in the Voronezh region.
“The enemy was stockpiling surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, shells for tanks and artillery, as well as boxes of cartridges for firearms,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information to the media.
“It is from this warehouse that the occupiers supply ammunition to their troops in Ukraine.”
The official also said that Ukraine’s State Security Service was behind a drone attack on an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region the day before.
Russian emergency services reported that falling drone debris sparked a fire at the site, which was extinguished Sunday morning.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not mention either strike during its morning briefing, but said air defense systems destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.
The strikes come after a Ukrainian military spokesman said Thursday that Kyiv’s troops had withdrawn from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chassiv Yar, a strategically important city in the Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble by a month-long Russian assault.
For months, Russian forces have been trying to gain ground in Ukraine’s industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition.
In a joint investigation published Friday, independent Russian news outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces were losing between 200 and 250 soldiers in Ukraine every day.
Military analysts believe that the fall of Chassiv Yar could also compromise key Ukrainian supply routes and endanger nearby cities, bringing Russia closer to its stated goal of seizing the entire Donetsk region.
Additional sources • adaptation: Serge Duchêne