Russia targets blood bank and airbase in latest strikes on Ukraine

Ukraine says that Russia bombed a blood bank near Kharkiv before launching a multi-wave overnight attack in the west of Ukraine as it attacked an air base.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said people had been killed and wounded in an earlier hit to a blood transfusion centre in the town of Kupiansk, a railway hub fewer than 16 kilometres from the front in the eastern Kharkiv region.

Rescue workers were extinguishing a fire at the scene, he said on Saturday evening, however he did not say how many casualties there were.

A “guided air bomb” hit the centre in Kupiansk, a city a few dozen kilometres from the Russian border, Mr Zelenskyy said.

“Rescuers are extinguishing the fire,” he wrote on social media.

The strike came shortly after Mr Zelenskyy said Russian missiles had hit a facility of the Ukrainian aeronautics group Motor Sich, a maker of plane and helicopter engines and other components.

It is one of several companies requisitioned by the government since Moscow’s invasion.

In his evening address, Mr Zelensky remained defiant, saying that “no matter how many such Russian attacks there are, they will still do nothing for the enemy”.

Both attacks occurred just hours after Kyiv hit a Russian tanker in the Kerch Strait.

70 overnight missiles

Ukraine’s Air Force said 70 air-assault weapons were fired overnight at the Khmelnytskyi region in western Ukraine, around 300 kilometres south-west of Kyiv, with 10 bypassing air defences.

Russia confirmed the strikes saying that its forces struck military air bases in western Ukraine and that “all targets were hit”.

“Overnight Russia’s armed forces carried out strikes… on Ukrainian armed forces air bases around the settlements of Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytskyi region and Dubno in the Rivne region,” the Russian Defence Ministry said.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service released footage showing what it said was a blaze at an agricultural grain elevator for corn waste, adding that a worker had been wounded.

The region’s administration also released photos of destroyed buildings and fires.

The attacks appeared to be focussed on the Khmelnytskyi region, which is hundreds of kilometres from the front lines of the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s air defence destroyed 30 out of 40 cruise missiles and all 27 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones fired overnight, the air force said on the Telegram messaging channel.

It also said Russia launched three Kinzhal hypersonic missiles — harder to intercept — but did not disclose whether or not they were destroyed. The Ukrainian military noted information on them is classified.

It was not clear what happened to the 10 cruise missiles that were not shot down.

“The Starokonstiantyniv (military) airfield is on the enemy’s mind. There was a series of explosions in the communities,” the deputy governor of Khmelnytskyi, Serhiy Tiurin, said.

Mr Tiurin said explosions had damaged several houses, a communal cultural institution and a bus station and that the fire at the grain silo spread over 1,400 square metres before being extinguished.

Meanwhile “only a few private households were damaged” in the Rivne region, the head of the regional state administration Vitaliy Koval said Sunday.

The Khmelnytskyi region has been regularly targeted by Russian strikes with one aimed at the airfield at the end of July.

Frontline fighting

On the frontline, Russia said it had captured the settlement of Novoselivske in north-eastern Ukraine, where Ukraine said it was confronted with a growing number of attacks.

Footage from the Russian army showed Novoselivske completely destroyed, with white smoke billowing over crumbling buildings.

Ukrainian army spokeswoman Ganna Malyar said on Friday that Russian troops were aiming to draw Ukrainian resources to the east, as Ukraine pursues its counter-offensive in the south.

Ukraine began a fresh attempt in June to push back Russian troops but it has made only modest progress, its forces contending with well-entrenched Russian positions built up over several months.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on July 26 that while Ukraine had recaptured half the territory that Russia had initially seized, the Ukrainian counteroffensive was in its early days and would take shape over “several months”.

With both sides focused on winning on the battlefield, any chance to secure peace looks thin.

Saudi Arabia is nevertheless hosting talks on the war with representatives from nearly 40 countries — including China, India and South Africa — but not Russia.

The talks concluded Saturday and as expected, no final declaration was released.

But a European source said there had been agreement that respect for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity and sovereignty” should be “at the heart of any peace settlement”.

AFP/Reuters