A Russian missile strike on a high-rise apartment building and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in the city of Dnipro has injured at least five people Friday, Ukrainian officials state. Russian Telegram channels say it was a response to a Ukrainian strike earlier in the day on the Russian town of Taganrog, which you will read more about a little later in this story.
“Dnipro. Friday evening. A high-rise building and the Security Service of Ukraine’s building were hit. Russian missile terror again,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on his Telegram channel.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the injured people were in the apartment building and that an apartment-by-apartment sweep has been completed.
“We will do everything to bring Russia to full punishment for aggression and terror against our people,” said Zelensky. “These bastards will answer. We will do everything for justice.”
Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov said on his Telegram channel that the attack on Dnipro was a reprisal for an earlier Ukrainian attack on the Russian Azov Sea port city of Taganrog earlier Friday.
“After the shelling of Taganrog by militants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Dnepropetrovsk, the SBU control building was destroyed by a missile attack,” Rogue claimed.
Russian officials claim Taganrog was attacked by a converted Ukrainian surface-to-air missile Friday.
Ukraine “carried out a terrorist attack on residential infrastructure in Taganrog (Rostov region) with a S-200 surface-to-air missile converted into a strike version,” the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) claimed on its Telegram channel.
You can read much more the conversion of that Soviet-era air defense missile about it in our story here.
The MoD said that the missile was detected and intercepted by Russian air defense systems, but that the wreckage fell on Taganrog, damaging several buildings and causing civilian casualties.
Taganrog is in Russia about 35 miles from the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian side of the border is an area still occupied by Russia. Taganrog sits some 90 miles from the front lines.
“The epicenter of the explosion fell on the territory of the Taganrog Art Museum,” Rostov Oblast Gov Vasily Golubev wrote on his Telegram channel. “The wall of the museum, the roof, garages and outbuildings were destroyed. The frames were broken in the windows and balconies of a neighboring three-story apartment building.”
Golubev said there were no fatalities, but nine people were injured.
A second missile “was hit by air defense systems – this time in the Azov region,” said Golubev, adding details about that incident are still being assessed.
A dramatic dashcam video shows an S-200 missile impacting in Taganrog.
Before we head into the latest news from Ukraine, The War Zone readers can catch up on our previous rolling coverage here.
The Latest
While Ukraine appears to be making limited progress in drives through Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts, claims are emerging that its forces are making another push into Kherson Oblast on the Russian-held side of the Dnipro River.
Video posted on Telegram and geolocated by the @NoelReports suggests that Ukrainian forces are continuing to push across the Konka River in occupied Kherson Oblast. That’s about two miles from the Dnipro River, a little less than two miles west of the Russian-held town of Oleskhy and six miles southwest of the Antonovksy Bridge. That’s where Kyiv’s forces had previously established a small bridgehead.
The latest imagery comes a little more than two weeks after a Russian milblogger said Ukrainian troops had crossed the Konka.
It is unclear from the video – apparently taken by a Russian drone – exactly what is taking place. Nor is it clear the exact objective. If they are Ukrainian forces, they could be looking to enter Oleshky, or just draw more Russian resources away from their defense of the ongoing counteroffensive.
The status of the advance near the Antonovsky Bridge meanwhile is also unknown. Earlier this month, we wrote that the bridgehead was still holding. However, a few days later, the official Russian TASS news agency reported that the advance was thwarted.
All these advances are taking place under the fog of war and it is hard to know exactly what is going on, so keep that in mind with these types of reports.
As we noted yesterday, Ukraine had made progress in two sectors of its counteroffensive.
Ukrainian forces captured Staromayorsk, a key logistics node in Donetsk Oblast, where new video emerged reportedly showing the liberation.
Ukrainian forces have also apparently approached a main Russian line of defense around Verbove and Rabotino in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
A video emerging on social media purports to show threats being made by a Russian warship to a civilian vessel traversing the Black Sea.
Ukrainian Border Guards posted a message on their Telegram channel saying that a Russian warship issued a warning to a commercial vessel. They did not name either vessel in the reported encounter.
“Russian warships continue to act aggressively and defiantly in the waters of the Black Sea, violating all norms of international maritime law,” Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s Office of the President, said Friday in a post on his Telegram channel that also included a video of the encounter posted online.
Russia’s Federal Security Service said on Thursday it had found traces of explosives on board a foreign vessel en route from Turkey to Russia that had previously entered a Ukrainian port. It was the second such announcement this week involving a foreign ship heading to Russia to pick up grain, according to Reuters
The reported warning comes in the wake of Russia pulling out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, hammered out last year to allow grain and other food and fertilizer to be shipped out via Ukraine’s Black Sea ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny. Russia withdrew from that deal earlier this month following Ukraine’s attack on the Kerch Bridge. The Kremlin has denied a connection.
Speaking of the Black Sea, Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate, offered a terse prediction for when Ukraine will liberate Crimea.
“Soon,” he told the Ukrainian TSN news outlet, without offering any specifics.
Video has emerged on social media of Ukrainian troops in an M1152A1 Humvee using an Arnold Defense LAND-LGR4 four-shot launcher to fire Hydra 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II rockets. APKWS adds a laser guidance system to unguided rockets. You can read more about them in our story here. In the video below, you can see the the operators get into the Humvee, then launch two of the rockets at a Russian target. They can also fire unguided 70mm rockets, as well.
Ukraine’s United24 media outlet produced a video showing the work of the Territorial Defense Forces operating domestically-produced Punisher drones, said to have a range of 45 kilometers (about 28 miles).
The Russians paraded a captured French-donated AMX 10-RC armored vehicle through the streets of occupied Mariupol.
And finally, watch these Ukrainian soldiers digging through dirt to save one of their comrades — all part of the horrors of war ongoing across the front in Ukraine.
That’s it for now. We’ll update this story when there’s more news to report about Ukraine.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com