The Russian army claimed to have carried out a drone attack overnight from Saturday to Sunday against the port of Reni, located on the Danube in southern Ukraine, on the border with NATO member Romania. “Last night, the Russian air force carried out a group strike with drones on fuel depots used to refuel military equipment of the Ukrainian army in the port of Reni”, indicated the Russian Ministry of Defense, assuring that the objective of the strike had been “achieved” and all targets hit.
Ukraine said on Sunday that Russian drones had struck “civilian industrial” sites in the Danube region in the south-west of the country, near Romania. “The enemy has attacked civilian industrial infrastructure in the Danube region,” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram. “The attack left two injured, who were hospitalized,” he added.
Romania, for its part, condemned the “unjustified” Russian attack on the Danube, near its border.
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Sunday it had shot down 22 Russian drones in the Odessa region in the south of the country. “On the night of September 3, 2023, the Russian occupiers launched several waves of ‘Shahed-136/131’ drone attacks from the south and southeast,” the Ukrainian Air Force wrote on Telegram , adding that 22 drones were destroyed out of a total of 25 launched.
Following the end in July of the agreement which allowed Ukraine to safely export its grain via the Black Sea, Russia increased attacks against the regions of Odessa and Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, where find ports and other crucial infrastructure for this trade.
In August, a first cargo ship passed through the Black Sea reached Istanbul, Turkey, despite Russian obstruction. And on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that two new ships had passed through the “temporary grain corridor in the Black Sea” set up by his country.
The Kiev army has made a significant breakthrough in Russian defense lines in southern Ukraine, one of its senior generals told the British daily The Guardian.
“We are now between the first and the second line of Russian defence”, says General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, in charge of the counter-offensive in the south, in this interview published this weekend, a few days after the announcement by Kiev of a symbolic victory with the recovery of the village of Robotyne.
“We are now in the process of destroying the enemy units responsible for protecting the Russian troops when they withdraw behind their second line of defense”, assured the general, whose troops had liberated the city of Kherson (south) the last year.
“The enemy is drawing on its reserves, not only in Ukraine but also in Russia. Sooner or later, the Russians will run out of their best soldiers. This will give us an opportunity to attack them more and faster,” the general said. “It’s all to come,” he added.
He also explains that the Ukrainian army was delayed in its counter-offensive because it “spent more time than expected clearing the territories” occupied by the Russians. “Unfortunately, the evacuation of the injured was difficult for us. And that also complicated our progress,” he added, admitting that kyiv had suffered significant losses.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev assured Sunday that Moscow had recruited around 280,000 soldiers since the beginning of the year, 50,000 more than the previous figures dating from the beginning of August, in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine. “According to data from the Russian Ministry of Defense, about 280,000 people have been accepted under contract into the ranks of the armed forces since January 1,” Medvedev was quoted by state news agency TASS as saying.
The former head of state, who is currently deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, made his statements during a visit to the island of Sakhalin, in the Far East. In early August he announced that the army had recruited more than 230,000 people since January 1.
