Ukrainian drone attacks struck industrial facilities in Russia’s western city of Ryazan overnight Tuesday, triggering fires at refineries and forcing the country’s top online retailer Wildberries to evacuate its local warehouses, according to Russian authorities.
Ryazan Governor Pavel Malkov reported that 45 drones were shot down over the region, with falling debris igniting fires in an industrial area and damaging residential buildings. Six people were hospitalized with injuries, Malkov said on Telegram.
The coordinated assault marks a significant escalation in Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign, what President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the “long-range sanctions campaign” aimed at crippling Russia’s war economy.
Drones have damaged at least seven Wildberries warehouses across Russia in recent days, destroying roughly 10 percent of the company’s total storage capacity, the retailer confirmed. The disruption has inflicted heavy losses on tens of thousands of small businesses that depend on the platform to sell goods and services.
Zelensky confirmed the strikes hit “an oil refinery and logistics centre in Ryazan,” along with a target in Russian-occupied Crimea where high-speed boats belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet are based.
“Russia must feel that every day of this war will only come at a higher cost for it,” Zelensky said in a statement on X.
In a separate incident, a woman was killed and a man injured after missile debris struck an apartment building in the southern Russian city of Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, regional Governor Yury Slyusar reported. Taganrog hosts various industrial facilities and a grain terminal.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its forces had seized two Ukrainian villages — Svitlе in the eastern Donetsk region and Nova Sich in the northeastern Sumy region. It also said its drones struck two vessels carrying weapons and military equipment east of the Ukrainian port of Odesa, where local authorities reported damaged infrastructure.
On the Ukrainian side, a man was killed and three others wounded in a Russian drone attack in the Kherson region, local authorities said. Five people, including a child, were also injured in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Russia carried out dozens of attacks using drones, aerial bombs and artillery.
The back-and-forth strikes on shipping reflect a growing trend. Ukraine and Russia have both increasingly targeted vessels in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov in recent weeks, contributing to a decline in oil and grain supplies moving through the region.
The Ryazan attack underscores Ukraine’s determination to take the war deep into Russian territory, targeting economic infrastructure that fuels Moscow’s war machine. Western analysts say the strategy is having an increasingly serious impact on the Russian economy, though the Kremlin has so far managed to contain the domestic fallout.
Author: Pulse Of Nations Wire Desk
