Russian anti-aircraft defense destroyed an unidentified object near Engels, 600 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, on Thursday, the regional governor announced, three days after an attack on the local airbase left three dead.
“The air defense system was activated on the territory of the Engels district. An unidentified object was destroyed. Operational services were sent to the site. There is no threat to the safety of residents,” Roman Busargin was quoted as saying by the state. TASS agency.
Russian authorities said they destroyed a Ukrainian drone on Monday that was due to attack the Engels base, but that three soldiers had been killed when they were hit by debris from the aircraft.
The governor of Saratov, the region where the base is located, said that inaccurate information was circulating about the need to evacuate Engels and asked the population to remain calm.
“Please stay calm. It is not required to evacuate the city,” Busargin wrote on the Telegram social network.
The news about a possible new attack on the Engels base came the day that Russia resumed its bombing of energy infrastructure in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military said that the air defense managed to neutralize 54 of the 69 missiles fired by the Russian forces.
The Ukrainian capital kyiv was one of the targets and the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said around half the city was without power.
“Forty percent of consumers in the capital were left without electricity after the Russian attack,” Klitschko wrote on the Telegram social network, quoted by the French agency AFP.
Klitschko also said that the water supply and district heating were operating normally, except in buildings without electricity whose boilers are powered by electricity.
After Russia achieved military successes in an initial phase of the invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24 this year, Ukrainian forces have launched a counteroffensive in recent months, having received weapons from their Western allies.
With its forces now confined to parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, Russia has been bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and is being accused of using cold as a weapon of war against civilians.
This Russian tactic was recently denounced by the UN, which warned of the risk faced by millions of civilians in Ukraine, where temperatures are very low in winter, as well as the possibility of a new wave of refugees in Europe.
More than 7.8 million people have fled the war in Ukraine to other European countries, with another 6.5 million internally displaced, according to recent United Nations figures.
The exact number of civilian and military casualties in ten months of war is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, have admitted that it will be high.
Information published by the two sides about the course of the war cannot be immediately verified by independent sources.
Source: TSF
