Ukrainian Drone Strikes Kill Nine in Russia, Target Wildberries; Russia Retaliates in Ukraine

Ukrainian drone strikes killed at least nine people in Russia on Sunday, with targets again including retail giant Wildberries, while Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five, according to officials in both countries. Drones attacked a Wildberries warehouse in the Samara region, about 800km (500 ​miles) from Ukraine’s most advanced military positions, governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev ​said. There were ​no casualties and a fire triggered by the attack was being put out, he said. Ukrainian forces have attacked about a dozen Wildberries sites since 18 July in an attempt to disrupt the operations of the company, which is Russia’s largest online retailer and a linchpin of the consumer economy often described as the country’s version of Amazon.

Three people were killed and two injured in a drone attack on the Udmurtia region of Russia, acting governor Olga Abramova said. In the border region of ​Belgorod, three people were killed and five injured in Ukrainian strikes, the local taskforce reported. A Ukrainian drone struck an area next to ​a playground, killing one child and injuring two, acting regional governorAlexander Shuvayev said.

Russian strikes in Ukraine killed two people in the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, and at least one person each in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to regional authorities. A separate Russian strike destroyed a postal terminal in the northern Kharkiv region, killing a worker, the mail operator Nova Poshta said.

A strike on a Russian residential building in Samara’s neighbouring region of Saratov killed two people in the city of Engels, governor Roman Busargin ​said. Civil infrastructure was damaged in Engels and the city of Saratov, he said. Ukraine’s military said on Sunday that their forces attacked the Saratov oil refinery and the Engels military airbase, sparking fires at both facilities. It said its forces also struck an oil depot in the western Kaluga region.

An EU naval mission led by Italy boarded a tanker from Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” on Sunday, the ​second such operation in ​less than ​two weeks as Europe intensifies scrutiny of vessels suspected of helping Moscow circumvent oil sanctions. Italy’s defence ministry said the Toa Payoh, a ​tanker subject to EU sanctions, was intercepted west of the Sicilian island of Pantelleria while sailing from Benin to Istanbul. The vessel had switched to ​a Cameroon registry only last week, a source familiar with the operation said.