Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that his forces had an advantage on the battlefield in Ukraine, and that it might be necessary for Russian forces to create a buffer zone on the Ukrainian side of the border to prevent attacks on Russian territory.
Putin’s comments came after the latest Ukrainian drone strikes on a Russian oil refinery and Putin claiming a new six-year term in an internationally discredited election.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that “everything Russia does in the occupied territory of Ukraine is a crime.”
“There must be a just retribution for everything the Russian murderers have done in this war and for the sake of Putin's lifelong power,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
Ukraine launched 35 drones across Russia that set off a brief fire at an oil refinery, targeted Moscow and affected electricity supplies in border areas, Russia said Sunday.
Of the drones launched by Ukraine, 17 were destroyed over the southern region of Krasnodar, four over the Moscow region and the rest over six other regions, the Russian defense ministry said on Telegram on Sunday.
“The drones were neutralized, but a fire broke out as a result of the fall of one of the devices,” the operational headquarters of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia said on Telegram.
The fire was put out after a few hours, and although it did not directly lead to any deaths, initial reports indicated at least one person died from a heart attack, the post said.
VOA could not independently verify those reports.
Since the war began in February 2022, Ukrainian attack drones launched by the SBU domestic security service have hit 12 Russian oil refineries, Reuters cited a Ukrainian intelligence source as saying.
The Belgorod regional governor said Ukrainian shelling killed one man and wounded 11 others in the region. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor, had said earlier Sunday that a 16-year-old girl had been killed in the border region after her house caught on fire from a Ukrainian shell.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said that 14 Russian drones were shot down over the Odesa region Sunday. That attack comes just two days after a Russian ballistic missile assault on the southern port city Friday that killed at least 21 people.
The United Kingdom’s defense ministry said Sunday that the country’s defense secretary, Grant Shapps, had canceled a trip to Odesa earlier this month due to the threat of Russian missiles.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
