Ukraine says hit Russian ammo depot

KYIV: Kyiv on Saturday said it had struck an ammunition depot in a Russian region bordering Ukraine where a large fire broke out overnight after a drone attack.

The Russian governor of the Voronezh region said debris from a downed drone triggered a fire and series of explosions, ordering the evacuation of nearby settlements.

Russian anti-air defence systems “detected and neutralised a drone” early on Saturday morning over the western part of the region, under 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Ukraine, Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram.

“No-one was injured” but when the drone fell, it sparked a large fire “that spread to explosive devices and caused them to detonate”, Gusev continued, without providing details of what facility was hit.

“A decision was taken to evacuate residents of a village” because of the blaze, he said.

Russian Telegram channels said the fire broke out in a local munitions depot.

Ukraine’s SBU security services later claimed it had hit a Russian ammunition depot.

“Last night, the Russians lost a large ammunition and equipment depot,” a source in the SBU told AFP.

The source said Kyiv was targeting “military airfields, ammunition depots and infrastructure facilities” in order to “create a demilitarised zone in the regions of Russia adjacent to Ukraine.”

It called them all “legitimate targets”

For the past month, Russia has faced a large-scale cross-border Ukrainian offensive in the neighbouring Kursk region and announces almost daily that it has destroyed Ukrainian drones targeting its territory.

Kyiv says the drone strikes are in response to Russian bombardments that target its military and industrial facilities and have killed thousands of civilians since Moscow invaded in February 2022.