Russia, Ukraine trade overnight drone strikes targeting port, industrial facilities

Burc Eruygur

• Zelenskyy says key enterprise within Russian space agency Roscosmos in Samara region, air base in Nizhny Novgorod region hit by Ukraine overnight, while Moscow yet to comment

Russia and Ukraine on Saturday renewed accusations against each other concerning overnight drone strikes, which have targeted port infrastructure and industrial facilities.

In Russia, Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on Telegram that Ukraine launched a missile strike on an unspecified “industrial facility.”

“An emergency response team has been formed. All emergency services are on the ground,” Fedorishchev said, noting that authorities are assessing the situation, including with regard to casualties.

Samara Mayor Ivan Noskov wrote separately on Russian social media platform Max that the city’s industrial infrastructure sustained “localized damage,” adding that medical assistance has been provided to those injured.

“In Russia’s Samara region, one of the key enterprises within (Russian space agency) Roscosmos – the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production – was hit. Flamingo missiles were used,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement shared on US social media platform X.

Zelenskyy further claimed strikes on the Savasleyka air base in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, adding Kyiv also received confirmation on damage it aimed to inflict at an oil facility in Ust-Luga, situated in the country’s northern Leningrad region.

Russian authorities have not yet commented on Zelenskyy’s remarks, though the country’s Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses shot down 598 Ukrainian drones overnight across 19 regions, as well as over the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

The ministry later claimed that, since Friday evening, the Russian military hit a warehouse in the port of Pivdennyi, a patrol boat and warehouse in the port of Odesa, and infrastructure in the port of Izmail, which it alleged are “involved in supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

In Ukraine, Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said that strikes in his region hit the grounds of a shoe factory, damaging warehouses and a canteen, as well as causing fires.

“There were also fires on the territory of a non-working enterprise and an abandoned private residential building. Rescuers have now extinguished all fires,” Kiper further said, noting that there are no casualties based on preliminary information.

Zaporizhzhia Governor Ivan Fedorov said that a shopping center and an unspecified industrial facility were targeted overnight by Russian drones. He later reported that five people were injured during morning strikes.

Meanwhile, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said that a 3-month-old baby died and 11 others were injured following a drone strike on a multi-story building in the city of Marhanets.

Ukraine’s Air Force claimed that the country’s air defenses downed 124 out of 152 drones launched by Russia overnight.

Moscow and Kyiv have increasingly targeted each other’s logistics centers, as well as port and energy infrastructure, during the ongoing war.

Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, maintaining that their strikes are directed at military targets or facilities linked to military activities.