Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russian Navy officer ‘killed after bomb hidden in rubbish bin’ explodes in Crimea

Russia struck Ukraine’s largest grain export port on the Danube on Thursday, causing damage and starting a fire, authorities said.

The port of Izmail, near the Romanian ⁠border in Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, handles exports of grain and other commodities.

Izmail regional state administration said on Telegram the overnight strikes had damaged port infrastructure and taken out power in the southeast of the city.

Five people were killed while trying to defuse an explosive device in Sevastopol, the largest city in Russian-controlled Crimea, regional governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Thursday.

He said four emergency service bomb disposal specialists and a security guard were carrying out clearance work following a Ukrainian drone attack on the city when the explosion occurred.

Both sides have stepped up air attacks in the fifth year of the full-scale war that Russia launched in 2022.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defence units shot down or intercepted 362 Ukrainian drones overnight across a number of Russian and Russian-controlled regions, including Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Russia has handed over the bodies of 261 Ukrainian soldiers and received 24 of its own war dead in return, Russian outlet RBC reported on Thursday, citing a senior Russian lawmaker.

The two sides have carried out such exchanges at intervals throughout the 4-and-a-half year war.

Moscow has claimed that its forces have seized control of the village of Petrivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

The Independent has not yet independently verified the report.

Ukraine’s military struck an oil refinery and petrochemical complex in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, causing a fire, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Thursday.

We earlier reported that Russian authorities said Ukraine had attacked an industrial area in Russia’s Bashkortostan region.

It said on the Telegram app that the complex was located about 1,300 km (808 miles) from the Ukrainian border and was involved in supplying fuel to the Russian troops.

Wildberries, the online retailer that Kyiv has been targeted in a drone campaign which aims at “bringing the war home” to ordinary Russians, also confirmed that one if its facilities in the region was set on fire by the attack.

Russia launched an overnight attack on Ukraine’s Danube port city of Izmail in the southern Odesa region, sparking fires and damaging port infrastructure, local authorities said on Thursday.

The strike hit the port area, according to officials posting on Telegram.

Located near Ukraine’s border with Romania, Izmail is home to the country’s largest Danube River port and serves as a key export hub for grain and other commodities.

Demand for the US Patriot air defence system has increased this year as Ukraine’s war against the Russian invasion and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has depleted supplies of interceptor missiles.

Ukraine is seeking further Patriot interceptors to defend itself against Russian ballistic missile attacks, while the Iran war has drained stores in the US and the Gulf.

Meanwhile, some European countries are hanging onto missiles that they may require for their own defence.

Here, The Independent takes a look at what Patriot missiles are, and why they are important to Ukraine.

Nobel laureate and former chief editor of newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, said that Russia cannot claim victory in Ukraine because the war has devastated both countries, and that Ukraine may be destroyed but cannot be conquered.

He told the BBC: “There will never be ‘victory’. Because what has been going on for nearly five years – no matter how it ends – can no longer be considered a victory.

“It cannot be a victory when two Slavic nations have ripped a million people to shreds. Or more than a million.”

He said: “It seems to me that the situation with Ukraine now is this: you can destroy it, but you cannot conquer it. What do I mean by destroy? Continued escalation all the way to the use of a nuclear weapon.”

He continued: “All those political experts who say ‘Putin thinks this’ or ‘Putin is scared of that’…they’re all charlatans.

“It’s in the same league as astrology. Nobody knows what’s going on in Vladimir Putin’s head. And I don’t know.

“I see things only as a journalist. I study big data. And since the beginning of the year, the need to use nuclear weapons has been mentioned more than 500 times. When wackos say this, I pay no attention. But I’ve heard it discussed on state TV. And at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, a state-run event, one of the speakers talked up the use of nuclear weapons as something favourable, something good.”