Ukraine: New attacks by Kyiv on Russian territory. Moscow is building secret bases to launch long-range drones

Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory continue unabated. Moscow’s air defences intercepted and destroyed 205 Ukrainian drones flying over the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea during the night. This was reported by the Russian Ministry of Defence. The Ukrainian Armed Forces also fired missiles at the village of Koloskovo in the Belgorod region. Local authorities quoted by the TASS news agency report that a woman was killed when a drone struck her home in the Astrakhan region. A man lost his life in a drone raid in the border region of Bryansk, and a soldier was killed in an attack in the Belgorod region. Earlier in the Belgorod region, the governor, Alexander Shuvayev, had reported that six people had been killed and four injured in a missile attack on the village of Koloskovo. Among the injured was a 14-year-old boy.

Meanwhile, Russia also resumed its bombardment last night of the Ukrainian ports of Odessa, on the Black Sea, and Izmail, on the Danube, along the border with Romania. This was reported by the Ministry of Defence in Moscow, which stated that in Odessa, a Tarantul-class torpedo boat and a logistics centre belonging to Nova Pochta – the country’s largest private courier service, whose sites have already been targeted several times in recent weeks – were hit. In Izmail, the ministry added, ‘a berthing terminal for unloading ships carrying military cargo, hangars containing Western military equipment, and warehouses housing unmanned vessels’ were targeted.

According to the British newspaper *The Telegraph*, which published an investigation based on an analysis of satellite imagery, confidential documents and data from the analytics firm DroneSec, Russia is reported to have built and expanded at least ten military bases along its borders with Ukraine and Belarus, designed for the mass launch of state-of-the-art drones with the aim of systematically weakening and breaching Ukraine’s air defences. Journalists and military analysts have discovered 59 mechanical launch ramps along the borders between Ukraine and Belarus. These rail-mounted catapults replace runways and enable the rapid launch of heavy, aeroplane-like drones right on the front line. Experts point out that some are designed to launch the latest high-speed versions of long-range drones, equipped with jet propulsion. Some of these hubs have been created by converting existing military bases and civilian airports, whilst others have been built from scratch in rural areas.

The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, announced in the German newspaper *Die Welt* her intention to increase by a third the number of Russian entities subject to sanctions due to the war in Ukraine. “For this autumn, I am proposing the most ambitious sanctions list since the start of the conflict. Once adopted, these measures would lead to an immediate increase of one-third in the total number of Russian entities subject to sanctions,” the diplomat stated. Since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, “EU sanctions have already imposed a huge cost on Russia, depriving its war machine of over one thousand billion euros,” she said. Since the start of the war, the European Union has adopted 21 sanctions packages against Russia; according to the European Commission, the measures currently target nearly 3,000 individuals and entities.