Ukraine has launched air strikes on one of Russia’s largest arms factories, the biggest oil terminal in occupied Crimea and a power station supplying the city of Belgorod.
It comes as its president hailed the country’s growing use of domestically-made missiles and drones.
“The key thing to understand is that in recent days, Ukraine has used only Ukrainian-made weapons, and not only drones,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in Kyiv on Monday alongside visiting Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof.
“And I would like to thank not only our soldiers, but also the manufacturers who have taken the appropriate steps. We expect greater opportunities, but they depend on our financial resources.”
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Ukrainian military and intelligence officials said the country’s forces had attacked the Sverdlov ammunition plant in the Nizhny Novgorod region of western Russia, the oil terminal at Feodosia in Crimea, and a large ammunition depot on the Black Sea peninsula.
Russia did not confirm the strikes but said it had shot down 251 Ukrainian drones in the early hours of Monday. Footage posted on social media confirmed explosions and fires in the areas of the targets listed by Kyiv.
Officials in the Russian city of Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border, said strikes on a power station late on Sunday night cut electricity to 40,000 residents. Power to most of them was restored within several hours, but another rocket strike on the city was reported on Monday afternoon, killing two people and causing another power cut.
Russia has launched intense and deadly missile and drone strikes in recent days on energy infrastructure across Ukraine, in what Mr Zelenskiy says is a bid to cripple the country’s power grid as colder weather sets in.
[ Biggest Russian air strike on Ukraine’s gas system increases fears for winterOpens in new window ]
“Russia is openly trying to destroy our civilian infrastructure right now, ahead of winter – our gas infrastructure, our power generation and transmission,” he said on Sunday.
“Zero real reaction from the world. We will fight so that the world does not remain silent and so that Russia feels the response,” he added, after four people were killed and energy facilities were hit in the biggest attack of the war on Lviv in western Ukraine, which was targeted with 23 missiles and 140 drones.
The United Nations (UN) office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs said that in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, “relentless hostilities ... continue to take lives and injure civilians. Over the last days, thousands have been left without electricity due to attacks when temperatures dropped”.
Ukraine still relies on western states for air defence systems and interceptor missiles, but Mr Zelenskiy told a defence industry forum on Monday that his country’s arms industry had grown tenfold since the start of Russia’s all-out invasion in 2022.
“Our production potential for drones and missiles alone will reach $35 billion (€29.9 billion) next year. Already over 40 per cent of the weapons in use at the front are either made in Ukraine or produced with Ukraine,” he said.
“The task for manufacturers, for the government of Ukraine, for all institutions involved is that by the end of the year no less than 50 per cent of the weapons at the front must be our Ukrainian weapons.”
Russia denies being behind drone flights that have disrupted several large European airports in recent weeks, but its former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said he hoped the incidents would make Europeans feel the threat of war “on their own skin” and spur them to “rip the heads off” their leaders.
“They should be scared and tremble, like dumb animals in a herd being driven to the slaughter,” he wrote on social media on Monday. “They should s**t themselves from fear, foreseeing their imminent and agonising end.”
