Explosions rock Kharkiv, Ukrainian defenses shoot down Russian drones

Ukraine – Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported a series of explosions around the city of Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine. These explosions occurred after repeated sirens were heard, due to suicide drones flying over the city and its suburbs.

Eyewitnesses documented explosions in various areas on the outskirts of the city, with power outages reported in several Kharkiv districts, and suicide marches were observed in other provinces such as Sumy, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, and Dnipro.

In Kiev, Ukrainian authorities announced the downing of more than 10 Russian drones in the third attack on the capital in 4 days. This announcement was made by the head of the military administration in Kiev, Sergei Popko, who confirmed that Ukrainian air defenses were able to confront the attack.

The Ukrainian military said it attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s Rostov region, sparking a major fire. It also said it targeted an oil depot in the Kirov region and an artillery depot in Russia’s Voronezh region.

The Ukrainian army announced today, Thursday, that the number of Russian soldiers killed and wounded since the start of the war in February 2022 has risen to about 612,390 Ukrainian soldiers, including 1,200 killed and wounded during the past 24 hours.

This came according to a statement published by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on its Facebook page, and reported by the Ukrainian National News Agency “Ukrinform”.

The statement indicated that Ukrainian forces destroyed 8,571 tanks, including 3 tanks on Wednesday, in addition to 16,699 armored combat vehicles, 17,549 artillery systems, 1,174 multiple launch rocket systems, and 939 air defense systems.

368 warplanes, 328 helicopters, 14,369 drones, 2,556 cruise missiles, 28 warships, one submarine, 23,706 vehicles and fuel tanks, and 2,965 units of special equipment were also destroyed.

In contrast, the Russian Ministry of Defense published a video on its official Telegram channel today, Thursday, claiming that it documents the moment its forces targeted Ukrainian fighters in the Kherson region.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the Kornet anti-tank missile system, belonging to the airborne artillery formation of the Dnieper Group of Forces, fired a guided missile from the coast of the Kinburn Spit, which hit and destroyed a building of the Ukrainian forces on the right bank of the Dnieper River estuary.

However, after verification, it turned out that the video is old and was published last March, and not recent as the ministry claimed.

Later today, EU foreign ministers will meet in Brussels to discuss several important issues, including the war in Ukraine, the situation in the Gaza Strip, and the disputed presidential elections in Venezuela. Since the meeting is informal, no formal decisions are expected.

The meeting was scheduled to be held in the Hungarian capital Budapest, but was moved to Brussels in protest over Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last July.

The meeting’s agenda focuses on discussing the Russia-Ukraine war, with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in attendance. These discussions come two and a half years after Russia began its war against Ukraine in February 2022, as Kyiv surprised the world this month by launching an attack in the Kursk region inside Russian territory.

Source: Agencies