Ukraine’s armed forces confirmed an overnight attack on a large Russian ammunition depot, while the newly appointed foreign minister warned that Russia would target nuclear power sites.
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(Bloomberg) — Ukraine’s armed forces confirmed an overnight attack on a large Russian ammunition depot as the newly appointed foreign minister warned of Russian targeting of nuclear power sites.
According to intelligence sources, Russia is “preparing an attack on critical objects of nuclear energy of Ukraine before winter,” Andrii Sybiha said in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter.
In particular, the threat is related to “open distribution devices” in nuclear power plants and transmission substations, “critical for the safe operation of nuclear energy,” Sybiha added. Ukraine’s special services are sending relevant information to their partners and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, he said.
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One of the overnight drone strikes that Ukraine claimed in a Telegram post by the military was an arms depot near Tikhoretsk in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia. About 1,200 people were evacuated after what local officials described as debris from a downed drone caused a massive fire.
The second attack was on the main artillery command of the Russian defense ministry near Oktiabrskiy in the Tver region, north of Moscow, Ukraine said.
The attack came after Ukraine on Wednesday said it had destroyed a Russian weapons depot using long-range drones, also in the Tver region about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Ukraine’s northern border.
In Krasnodar Krai, the fire spread to an “explosive object” and set off a detonation, governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on his Telegram channel as he announced the evacuation.
The attack came as a new train formation arrived at the site carrying at least 2,000 tons of ammunition, including from North Korea, according to the Ukrainian military. These claims cannot be independently verified.
Images on social media showed a large fire at what it said was a military base in the area immediately east of the annexed Crimean peninsula.
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NASA’s FIRMS monitoring system, which tracks fires around the world using satellite data, recorded a new sign of heat near Tikhoretsk.
The area corresponds to a fenced storage facility with a hangar surrounded by fortifications and a local military airbase, as seen in satellite imagery.
A week ago, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said that supplies from Pyongyang had become a major headache, as their arrival in Russia usually portends more intense Kremlin military activity in eight to nine days.
Ukrainian Security Service drones also struck the Shaykovka air base in Russia’s Kaluga region overnight, where Tu-22M strategic bombers – which often take part in mass missile strikes – are believed to be based, according to people familiar with the operation who were not authorized to do so. public speaking. Russia has not yet commented.
The activity comes after Ukraine on Wednesday said it had destroyed Russia’s weapons stockpile using long-range drones.
In the incident, about 100 unmanned aerial vehicles exploded and destroyed a cache of Iskander and Tochka-U missiles in Toropets, a town in Russia’s western Tver region, a Ukrainian military official familiar with the matter said.
—With the help of Aliksandr Kudrytski.
(Recasts with the foreign minister’s comments on the nuclear threat.)
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