Black Sea Fleet planes destroyed three American-type Willard Maritime Force military speedboats with crew northeast of Snake Island, the ministry in Moscow said on Sunday. The boats headed towards the Crimean peninsula. The ministry had previously said that air defense also repelled attacks by eight drones near the coast of Crimea overnight.
Ukraine has recently repeatedly attacked Crimea, which it had previously annexed in 2014 in violation of international law. There have been several heavy explosions at Russian military bases. There was serious damage, deaths and injuries. Russia has expanded its air defenses but also patrols in the Black Sea to repel attacks. The Ukrainian attacks have no relation to the heavy bombing by Russia, which launched a war of aggression against Ukraine more than a year and a half ago.
In its ongoing counteroffensive, Ukraine has always made it clear that it is also about freeing the peninsula from Russian occupation. Although nuclear power Russia has warned that it would use all means at its disposal to defend Crimea, Kiev is convinced that Moscow will not allow the use of nuclear weapons. During the offensive, Ukraine wants to regain full control of the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, some of which are occupied by Russia.
The Russian military also reported a drone attack in the Bryansk region. Eight unmanned aerial vehicles launched from Ukraine were destroyed. There is no evidence of damage or injuries in the Telegram statement.
Regarding the alleged drone attack on Kiev, the Ukrainian military said on Sunday that 26 of 33 Iranian-made Shahed drones were destroyed by air defenses. Witnesses heard at least five explosions. “The drones approached the capital in groups and from different directions,” wrote the head of the military administration of the city of Kiev in Telegram. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said one person was injured in the historic district of Podil as a fire broke out near a city park. According to civil defense, apartments, cars, power lines and traffic signs were damaged in at least four districts of Kiev. According to local authorities, a school, a kindergarten, a training and rehabilitation center and eight residential buildings were damaged across the Kiev region.
According to the Ukrainian army, however, it gained slight ground on the front in the south of the country and recaptured another 1.5 square kilometers around the recently liberated city of Robotyne in the south. “We are making progress! In the Tavriya region, the armed forces have advanced more than a kilometer,” Ukrainian General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said in his daily situation report on Sunday. He leads the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the region.
“The Russians cling to every inch of our Ukrainian soil (…) However, the Ukrainian armed forces are trying to make it as difficult as possible to supply the Russian army, and in certain areas this is bearing fruit,” military officials said. saying in the Ukrainian media.
In early June, Ukraine launched a large-scale counteroffensive to recapture Russian-occupied territories. However, when advancing against Russian units, the armed forces repeatedly came across areas booby-trapped for tanks and mines. At the beginning of September, Kiev declared that it had breached an important Russian defense line in the Zaporizhia region, in the south of the country.
According to US assessments, the Ukrainians are running out of time in the current offensive. The Ukrainian army likely still has 30 to 45 days before the weather can complicate combat operations, US Chief of Staff Mark Milley told British broadcaster the BBC on Sunday. This is “still a decent amount of time,” Milley said. The Ukrainians made steady progress and maintained significant combat power. In about a month the cold will arrive, it will start to rain and it will become very muddy. “Then it will be very difficult to maneuver and then the depths of winter will come,” Milley said. At this point it is still too early to say whether the offensive failed or not.
According to a media report, the Romanian Foreign Ministry has meanwhile summoned the Russian ambassador following the discovery of new drone debris. The Secretary of State for Strategic Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iulian Chifu, conveyed to the Russian diplomat the protest of the Bucharest authorities regarding the repeated violation of Romanian airspace, after wreckage of Russian drones had been repeatedly found on the Romanian bank of the ” Branch of the Danube Chilija in recent days”.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently called his Romanian counterpart Luminita Odobescu about the wreckage of Russian drones, which have been repeatedly found not far from the Romanian village of Plauru, which is opposite the Ukrainian port of Ismail, on the Danube, and announced that the US would send 16 fighter jets to Romania to increase surveillance of its airspace.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the Russian attacks near the border “destabilizing” – although there were no signs that Russia wanted to intentionally target a NATO country. More recently, Russia has increasingly targeted the Ukrainian port city of Izmail on the Danube, near the border with Romania, with missiles and drones. After Russia canceled the grain deal, Ukraine is increasingly trying to transport grain abroad through the ports on the Danube.