by tyler | May 9, 2023 | CNN, europe
A Polish mayor died after falling from a fourth-floor window of a hotel in Sardinia, Italy, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported on Tuesday.
The mayor was not named by PAP or the spokesman for Fabrizio Mustaro, the investigator of the Cagliari police.
Mustaro’s spokesperson said the man was sitting on the windowsill and lost his balance. He added it was an accident and there was no violence involved.
The mayor, who was visiting with the Polish delegation, fell out of the window of the room where he was with a colleague, PAP reported.
The 44-year-old Polish citizen died on the night of Monday into Tuesday morning.
by tyler | May 9, 2023 | CNN, europe
Russian President Vladimir Putin led a pared-down Victory Day parade in Moscow on Tuesday as he repeated his false assertion that the West had launched a “true war” against Russia, despite the Kremlin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Thousands of people lined the streets of Moscow’s Red Square as part of Russia’s annual parade, an exhibition of patriotism marking the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.
Victory Day is the most significant day of Putin’s calendar, as he has long used it to rally public support, demonstrate the country’s military prowess and rail against the historical injustices he perceives Western nations have heaped on his nation.
The Russian leader has historically led the annual military parade on Red Square with displays of military hardware including tanks, missiles, and other weapons systems, before a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Kremlin wall, to honor the memory of those who perished in the battles.
More than 10,000 people and 125 units of various types of weapons and equipment were expected to be displayed at this year’s parade, according to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Last year the ministry announced 11,000 people and 131 types of weapons were involved in the military parade, with an airshow of 77 aircraft and helicopters.
But there was just one ancient World War II-era T-34 tank leading the mechanized column on Tuesday, as Moscow seemingly toned down its annual parade.
Tigr-M and VPK-Ural armored vehicles were also on display, but the main focus was the country’s S-400 air defense system and its intercontinental ballistic system – the Yaris.
The usual fly-past above the Red Square was canceled, state media reported, without providing an explanation.
Putin used the annual Victory Day parade to launch yet another scathing attack on the West, accusing it of holding Ukraine hostage to its anti-Russian plans.
“A true war has been unleashed against our motherland,” Putin said on Tuesday, claiming falsely that the West had provoked the war in Ukraine. “We have repelled international terrorism and to fit we will defend the residents of Donbas and secure our own safety. Russia has no unfriendly nations in the West or in the East.”
He also again drew comparisons between the conflict in Ukraine and the fight against Nazi forces in the World War II, saying that civilization is once again at a turning point.
Throughout his short address, Putin praised Russian troops fighting in what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, saying the country is “proud” of everyone who fights on the frontlines.
“There is no more important thing now than your combat work,” Putin said.
However, no mention was made of the high casualties suffered by Russian troops, which are estimated to be in the tens of thousands.
World leaders such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had attended the military parade in previous years. But such displays of solidarity have faded in recent years, after Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the war in Ukraine fractured diplomatic ties.
Moscow had been under pressure to strengthen its show of defenses and unity on Tuesday, after last week’s alleged drone strike on the Kremlin shattered the most powerful symbol of the Russian presidency.
Kyiv and its Western allies exchanged thorny memos with Moscow after it accused Ukraine of carrying out orders from the US in an attempted assassination against Putin. Ukraine and Washington vehemently denied the allegations.
The cause of the explosions is unknown, but the optics of a symbolic attack against the Kremlin gave it an opportunity to rally support for Putin from Russians as critics continue to speak out against Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Similarly, Russia’s wrath appeared neutered when a wave of drone and missile attacks was thwarted by Ukraine’s air defenses on Tuesday.
Over the past week, lives have been lost and civilians injured by debris from destroyed drones, or missiles that have punctured Ukrainian resistance. But above all, Kyiv’s air-defenses have proved potent, and Moscow’s less so.
On Monday, Russian oligarch Andrey Kovalev called Moscow’s military campaign “a terrible war.”
“The whole world is against us,” he said in a video speech later shared on Telegram.
At the same time, strained relations between senior Russian officials exploded into a public display of disunity as Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a fiery tirade criticizing the Russian military’s focus on the Victory Day parade – ahead of an expected spring offensive from Kyiv in the south.
“Today they [Ukrainians] are tearing up the flanks in the Artemovsk (Russian name for Bakhmut) direction, regrouping at Zaporizhzhia. And a counteroffensive is about to begin,” he said on his social media accounts on Tuesday.
“They absolutely clearly say that the counteroffensive will be on the ground, not on TV. In our country everybody thinks that we should do everything on TV and celebrate the Victory Day.”
He also chose the moment of the parade to release a statement saying in fact Russian defense ministry troops had abandoned positions around the city of Bakhmut – a key battleground in eastern Ukraine – and said he had been threatened with treason charges if he left.
“Victory Day is the victory of our grandfathers,” he added. “We haven’t earned that victory one millimeter.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared Russia to Nazi Germany as he proposed moving Victory Day celebrations a day earlier in a bill presented to lawmakers, in an effort to distance Kyiv from the Kremlin’s celebrations.
Like Russia, Ukraine traditionally commemorates victory over the Nazis on May 9, but that date has become increasingly associated with a parade in Moscow.
“It is on May 8 that most nations of the world remember the greatness of the victory over the Nazis,” Zelensky said Monday.
Zelensky said on Tuesday that Russia had failed to capture Bakhmut before the May 9 deadline of the Victory Day parade.
“They were not able to capture Bakhmut, this was the last important military operation that they wanted to complete by the nineth of May,” Zelensky said in a joint press conference with European President Ursula von der Leyen.
“Unfortunately, the city does not exist anymore everything is fully destroyed.”
by tyler | May 8, 2023 | CNN, europe
In this vacant and damaged village, news of Russia’s evacuation of occupied towns along the southern front cannot come soon enough.
Ukrainian-held Mala Tokmachka, just over a mile (2 kilometers) from Russian-held territory in the Zaporizhzhia region, has been left ghostly and battered by shelling, leaving the central square pockmarked, and the school’s facade torn off. Shrapnel is mixed in with fallen pine cones.
Raisa, a local woman passing some Ukrainian soldiers on her bicycle, said the explosions had picked up recently and she had heard small arms fire from the nearby highway. “There is no way out for us,” she said, of the remaining 200 civilians. “We have no water, gas or power for more than a year.”
Just 9 miles (15 km) down the road is Polohy, a town that Russian occupiers said Friday they would evacuate, a process which local sources said had got underway at the weekend, although some Russian soldiers apparently remain in place.
The town is a focus for Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive. While Kyiv has said it will not announce its commencement so as to cause maximum surprise, recent statements from Russian officials in occupied areas about attacks have indicated at least its opening stages are likely underway.
Polohy is one of over a dozen frontline settlements that occupying forces announced Friday would be emptied of civilians. A Russian occupation official, Yuri Balitsky, said “we cannot risk the safety of people and will provide funds for organized travel, lump sum payments, accommodation and meals.” He added children would undergo rehabilitation and rest in children’s camps,” echoing the language of previous incidents that Ukraine has dubbed forced deportation and on which the International Criminal Court based a war crimes indictment against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukrainian officials have said the evacuations are being used to provide cover for the departure of Russian troops, and claimed civilians are being sent to the coastal town of Berdyansk, and Russian soldiers to the heavily destroyed city of Mariupol.
It is as yet unclear what impact these evacuations – which on Sunday Russian occupation officials said amounted to 1,600 people – will have on Moscow’s ability to hold frontline towns. But it is a sign of possible weakness, and in during past Ukrainian offensives, Russian positions have collapsed very suddenly, even as their spokespeople were articulating their avowed defense. At the best, these mass departures are recognition by Russian forces that the fight ahead of them will likely be intense.
The evacuees are also being moved all the way to the coastline – a reflection of the terrain to be fought over. Russia, according to satellite imagery, has built a substantial line of defenses along its southern front in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Below this line of trenches and concrete, there are reports of some ongoing defenses, but not of a depth that would suggest Russia can easily afford to lose this initial frontline. Once Ukraine’s well-prepared offensive has pushed past this first boundary, there is a risk for Moscow that Kyiv’s move to the coast is a lot easier. That could be disastrous for the Russian occupation and Putin’s strategic hold of the land corridor that runs through Zaporizhzhia and connects the Crimean peninsula to the rest of occupied Ukraine and the Russian mainland.
In the Ukrainian-held city of Orikihv, one of the last major population centers before this frontline, the prospect of Russian forces being pushed decisively back cannot come fast enough. A constant artillery duel busies the horizon, together with intermittent mushroom clouds from enormous, often inaccurate Russian airstrikes.
Four hit on Thursday, destroying two civilian houses but apparently missing any construction that could be presumed to be a target. On Sunday morning, a CNN crew witnessed a jet flying overhead that dropped two missiles – one a $500,000 Kh31-P according to Ukrainian officials – which slammed into the town, 700 yards away. The missile appeared to have missed any potential target, causing a 10-foot-deep crater in an empty patch of land in the city center.
Orikhiv is persistently battered by Russia’s rage as Ukrainian military pressure increases. The town’s rescue team said there is no longer any pattern to the shelling, which seems to strike at random times and locations. Dmytro Haydar, a rescuer, described the delicate balance his team must find between responding to strikes quickly and being caught in the regular “double-tap” follow-up attacks that Russian jets often launch to hit first-responders and survivors. “We saw them, as they leave a trail in the sky,” he said of one jet attack. “We had to stand near the basement because they launched guided bombs. There’s no particular time of day or place for the strikes.” Haydar gestured towards the recent sound of outgoing artillery fire and said: “That’s not necessarily Ukrainian. It could be from the Russian-held town of] Nesterianka. The frontline is 3 kilometers away, and then it’s them.”
The team’s chief, Andrew Grygorenko, said he was trapped at the start of the war in Russian-occupied Polohy, where he lived and worked as a rescuer. The Russians forced him and his men to continue their work. Grygorenko says his men one-by-one managed to escape. He evaded their tight scrutiny of his whereabouts when a local occupation official failed to turn up to work one day, and he drove a minibus of civilians out.
The regular effective targeting of Russian positions by Ukrainian firepower sparked a manhunt in the town for an informant. “They were searching for spotters, and those disloyal to the new power”, he said. “There are many missing people and many dead. We don’t know even the full picture. After liberation of our town, we will find many more there.”
by tyler | May 8, 2023 | CNN, europe
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has raised concerns as to the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, describing the situation as “increasingly unpredictable,” after Moscow ordered the evacuation of residents from Russian-occupied areas close to the facility.
More than 1,600 people, including 660 children, have been evacuated from Russian-occupied towns on the front lines in Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeniy Balitskiy, the Russia-appointed acting head of Zaporizhzhia region administration, said Monday.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, is held by Russian forces but mostly operated by a Ukrainian workforce.
The town of Enerhodar was among 18 settlements whose residents were evacuated over the weekend. Most of the plant’s staff live in the town, the International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement.
Grossi said he was deeply concerned about the “increasingly tense, stressful, and challenging conditions” for personnel and their families and about “the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant.”
“We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment,” Grossi warned.
The evacuation of the town come amid rumors of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, with the southern region likely to be a major target as Kyiv seeks to push back Moscow’s invasion.
The site director Yuri Chernichuk said operating staff are not being evacuated and “are doing everything necessary to ensure nuclear safety and security at the plant.”
Chernichuk said the plant’s six reactors are all in shutdown mode and its equipment is being maintained, “in accordance with all necessary nuclear safety and security regulations,” according to Grossi.
The plant’s position on the front lines – located on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river – means shelling in the surrounding towns and near the facility is common, according to local reports.
It has frequently been disconnected from Ukraine’s power grid due to intense Russian shelling in the area, repeatedly raising fears across Europe of a nuclear accident.
The plant is also significant because Ukraine relies heavily on nuclear power. Should Russia keep it, Ukraine would lose 20% of its domestic electricity generating capacity. Analysts have said Russia would want to capture the plant undamaged, with hopes of serving its own electricity market.
The IAEA said experts at the site continue to hear shelling on a regular basis, including late on Friday.
The evacuations, which began in Zaporizhzhia on Friday, were a “necessary measure” due to “intensified shelling of settlements” close to the front line, said Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-appointed acting governor of the partially occupied region.
Local Telegram channels reported sightings of evacuation buses and authorities telling residents to pack their bags and take their children out of kindergartens.
Evacuated residents were being placed in temporary accommodation and included children of elementary school age, Balitskiy said. He claimed the evacuees “have everything they need: food, a place to sleep, constant contact and consultation with specialists.”
Ukrainian officials have charged that Russian forces have used evacuations as a means to forcibly deport Ukrainians.
Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Operational Command South, told local media the evacuations were “an imitation of care for the local residents.”
She said this was a standard practice previously used by the Russians.
“They are trying to evacuate the people to the places where they set up their own defense lines and where they are setting their units in order to use local civilians as a cover,” Humeniuk said.
Her comments came as the exiled Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, claimed Russian soldiers are trying to leave Zaporizhzhia disguised as civilians.
“There are soldiers who try to escape from the temporarily occupied territories,” Fedorov said in an interview with Ukrainian media Sunday.
“Our residents report some cases of Russian soldiers dressing up in civilian clothes. One of the purposes why they do this is to run from the temporarily occupied territory.”
However, Fedorov also said Russian troops “are moving more and more to the Zaporizhzhia frontline.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian military officials reported Sunday that Russian forces continued to shell the region, but with no casualties in the past 24 hours.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s Operation Command South spokeswoman said Russian forces were trying to exhaust Ukraine’s air defense system.
“They are trying to find a way around it. And they are also expanding their tactics because they do not have a stable stock of the means that they can operate with,” Humeniuk said, adding the Russians are also trying “to test and find out where the air defense systems are located.”
Early Monday, five people were wounded in Kyiv following Russian drone attacks on districts of the Ukrainian capital overnight, according to Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv City Military Administration (KCMA).
In the south, Russia launched eight missiles at the port city of Odesa overnight Sunday, Ukraine’s air force said.
Russian missile attacks were also recorded in Kharkiv, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, according to Ukraine’s military.
And in Ukraine’s east, the head of the Wagner mercenary group claimed its troops have advanced in the embattled city of Bakhmut.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said Sunday his forces have advanced in “different directions so far,” though the Ukrainians still control 2.37 square kilometers.
Prigozhin has now suggested his forces will stay in Bakhmut after Russia’s Ministry of Defense promised to provide them with more ammunition, apparently backtracking on a threat to withdraw.
Bakhmut has been the site of a months-long assault by Russian forces that has driven thousands from their homes and left the area devastated.
But, despite the vast amounts of manpower and resources Russia has poured into capturing Bakhmut, Moscow’s forces have suffered high casualties and been unable to take total control of the city.
by tyler | May 5, 2023 | CNN, europe
Britons are more likely to say their views of the monarchy have worsened than improved over the past decade, according to a CNN poll, suggesting that King Charles III is facing serious challenges on the eve of his coronation, when he will be officially crowned head of an institution that has endured years of internal upheaval.
More than one-third of UK adults (36%) say their opinion of the family has become more negative than it was 10 years ago, the survey by polling company Savanta found. Queen Elizabeth II’s death last September brought to an end an era defined by the late monarch’s steadfast dedication to duty, amid rapidly changing times.
Just 21% say their views on the royal family have gotten more positive over the past decade, with another 41% saying their overall opinion has stayed the same. And three in 10 say they have become less interested in news about the family over that time, while 22% say they have grown more interested. A little less than half say that their interest level hasn’t changed.
Most Britons say they plan to take part in at least one event this weekend related to the coronation, which is set to be a magnificent display of tradition and pageantry.
But the public celebration of the new King comes as at a time when decades of demographic, religious and societal change have resulted in shifting attitudes to the monarchy, following the longest interlude between two coronations in British history.
UK residents are split in their level of interest in the coronation, the polling suggests, with broader views about the royal family and its members marked by generational divides.
Half of UK adults say they’re interested in the coronation, with only a fifth describing themselves as “very interested.”
Most say they plan to participate in at least one activity surrounding the festivities this weekend, with 40% planning to watch the coronation ceremony, 28% to watch the coronation concert on Sunday, 14% to attend a street party or other community event, and 7% to volunteer as part of the “Big Help Out” initiative. Just over a third plan to opt out of coronation-related events entirely.
Those age 55 and older are roughly 10 percentage points likelier than younger adults to say they’re interested in the coronation. They were most likely to say they’ll watch the ceremony, with about half planning to tune in.
By contrast, 37% of those age 35-54 and just 31% of those younger than 35 say they intend to watch the event, as an increasing number of young Britons express their indifference to or dislike for an institution they say has no relevance in their lives.
Ahead of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations last June, CNN spoke to young people in the UK who cited factors from British colonialism to a lack of diversity as reasons for feeling disconnected to the monarchy.
Adults younger than 35 are more likely than their older counterparts to say they’re planning to participate in the volunteer effort. Women are 10 points likelier than men to say they plan to watch the coronation concert, and 9 points likelier to say they’ll watch the ceremony.
More broadly, the poll finds the UK public reporting declining interest in – and opinions of – the royal family over the past decade, a period during which the institution has been embroiled in a series of controversies that have threatened the family’s popularity.
In 2019, Prince Andrew stepped back from his royal duties over his ties to disgraced financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. A day after a judge ruled a sexual abuse civil lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre against Andrew could proceed, Buckingham Palace announced that he had been stripped of his military titles and charities. Andrew later settled the lawsuit.
The royal institution has also faced serious allegations of racism over the years. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, said that pleas over her mental health were disregarded and that she was made to feel ostracized while she endured racist treatment from the British press during her time as a working royal.
In January, the family carried on with public duties as they worked to repair the fallout from Prince Harry’s explosive memoir, in which he made incendiary accusations against a number of senior royals.
Such controversies may have helped shape public attitudes toward the institution.
CNN’s polling suggests UK adults are closely divided on whether or not they currently see the royal family as role models: 44% say that the royal family isn’t a good source of leadership and guidance to people like them, while 41% say they are, with another 16% unsure. More than half (55%) of UK adults younger than 25 say that they don’t consider the royal family a good source of leadership and guidance, a view shared by just 36% of those aged 55 or older.
But not all members of the royal family are viewed in the same light. William, Prince of Wales and Catherine, Princess of Wales are the best regarded: 62% of UK adults hold a favorable view of both, with just 14% and 13%, respectively, viewing them unfavorably, and the remainder neutral or expressing no opinion. Just less than half have a favorable view of King Charles, with 23% rating him unfavorably.
Views of Queen Camilla are more split, with 34% rating her favorably, 32% unfavorably, and 31% saying their view is neither positive or negative. And opinions of Prince Harry and Meghan are underwater, with 52% and 56%, respectively, rating them unfavorably, and fewer than 3 in 10 expressing positive views of either.
Within the UK public, opinions on specific royals differ sharply by age. Older adults are substantially more positive than younger adults toward King Charles – almost two-thirds of those older than 55 view him favorably, compared with about a third of those younger than 35.
The same pattern holds true for opinions of Queen Camilla, who has a 44% favorability rating among those age 55 and older and a 23% favorability rating among under-35s, and for both the Prince of Wales (78% vs. 46%) and Princess of Wales (78% vs. 44%).
By contrast, the age dynamic is reversed for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex: 42% of UK adults younger than 35 hold a favorable opinion of Prince Harry, compared with just 13% of those 55 and older, and 40% in the youngest group view Meghan positively, compared with 10% among the oldest group.
The poll was conducted on March 24 through 26 among a random sample of 2,093 UK adults aged 18 and older. Surveys were conducted online, and weighted to be representative of the UK by age, sex, region and social grade. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.
Sign up for CNN’s Royal News, a weekly dispatch bringing you the inside track on the royal family, what they are up to in public and what’s happening behind palace walls.
by tyler | May 4, 2023 | CNN, europe
Russia unleashed its worst attacks on Kyiv in a year, Ukraine’s military said, as for the third time in four days missiles and drones hit the city.
The barrage came after Moscow accused Ukraine of attempting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin in a drone strike at the Kremlin overnight on Wednesday, allegations Kyiv has vehemently denied.
“Our city has not experienced such a heavy intensity of attacks since the beginning of this year! Last night, the aggressor launched another large-scale air strike on the capital,” Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv city military administration, wrote on Telegram.
All Russian missiles and drones “were destroyed in Kyiv airspace by our air defense forces,” Popko said after Moscow attacked the city with “Shahed-type barrage munitions and missiles, presumably ballistic.”
There were no civilian casualties or damage to residential buildings and infrastructure, he added.
Iran has given Russia hundreds of Shahed drones to use in its war in Ukraine. Known as “loitering munition,” the drones are capable of circling for some time in an area before flying their explosive payload toward a chosen target.
Air raid sirens sounded for more than three hours in Kyiv during the attack, Popko said, and explosions were heard in the capital and the southern port city Odesa early Thursday morning, according to Ukrainian parliament member Oleksii Honcharenko.
Ukraine says the drones that struck the city of Odesa had “for Moscow” and “for the Kremlin” written on them, suggesting the overnight strikes across Ukraine may have been relation for the explosions in the Russian capital.
Meanwhile the toll from shelling in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson rose to 23 people, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration said.
Russian military shelled the city of Kherson 16 times, including its residential area, according to Prokudin.
Thursday’s pre-dawn raid in Kyiv comes after extraordinary allegations from Moscow that Ukraine launched an attempt to kill Putin with a drone strike on the Kremlin.
Video that appeared on social media shows a bright flash and a puff of smoke over a part of the Kremlin, the official residence of the Russian president and the most potent symbol of power in Moscow.
The Kremlin said the attack was foiled and the alleged drones destroyed. In a statement it regarded the alleged attack as terrorism and a deliberate attempt on Putin’s life. “Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit,” it added.
The Russian president was not in the building at the time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Ukraine denied involvement in the alleged strike. “As President Zelensky has stated numerous times before, Ukraine uses all means at its disposal to free its own territory, not to attack others,” the Ukrainian presidential spokesman, Sergiy Nykyforov, told CNN on Wednesday.
Russia on Thursday accused the United States of being behind the attack.
In response to a question from CNN, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Such decisions, the definition of goals, the definition of means – all this is dictated to Kyiv from Washington.”
Meanwhile, former Russian official Ilya Ponomarev, who is linked with militant groups in the country, told CNN that he believed the attack was the work of what he calls Russian partisans, not the Ukrainian military.
US officials said they were still assessing the incident, and had no information about who might have been responsible.
Also early on Thursday, fires broke out in two oil refineries in southwestern Russia, following separate alleged drone strikes.
At Russia’s Ilsky oil refinery in the southwestern Krasnodar region, a fire ignited in the refinery’s reservoir, according to state-run news agency Tass.
“Due to an attack by an unknown drone, a fuel tank at the Ilsky Oil Refinery in the urban-type settlement of Ilsky in the Seversky district caught fire,” Tass quoted emergency services as saying.
Another drone struck a petrol products plant in Russia near the Ukrainian border during the night, according to Rostov Governor Vasily Golubev. The drone crashed into the construction site of an overpass at the Novoshakhtinsk plant near the village of Kiselevka, causing an explosion and fire, which plant staff immediately extinguished, Golubev said.
It is unclear who is responsible for the drone attack.
It comes after Russian state media on Wednesday said a drone strike ignited a fire that engulfed an oil storage facility in the port of Volna in Krasnodar.
That facility is close to the Kerch bridge that was set ablaze by Ukrainian forces in October 2022. It is unclear how the fuel storage tank caught fire and Ukraine has not commented on the incident.
