Drone shot down over Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters

A drone was shut down over the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in annexed Crimea, a second attempted strike within a month.

“The drone was shot down just above the fleet headquarters” in the city of Sevastopol, city Governor Mikhail Razvojaev wrote on Telegram, blaming the attempt on Ukrainian forces, according to Al Jazeera.

He further added that the strike fell on the roof and caught fire but there was no significant damage or victim. The first reported attack came on July 31, when a presumed Ukrainian drone attacked the Black Sea Fleet on Russia’s Navy Day, wounding five people.

Russia also reported Ukrainian drone attacks late on Friday. Russia’s TASS news agencies, citing a local official in Crimea, said it appeared Russian anti-aircraft forces had been in action near the western Crimean port of Yevpatoriya on Friday night.

Video footage posted by a Russian website showed what appeared to be a ground-to-air missile hitting a target. Tass cited a local official as saying Russian anti-aircraft forces knocked down six Ukrainian drones sent to attack the town of Nova Kakhovka, east of the city of Kherson, according to Al Jazeera.

Separately, an official in Crimea said defences there had downed an unspecified number of drones over the city of Sevastopol. Earlier, Moscow accused Kyiv for poisoning some of its soldiers in Ukraine, media reports said.

According to Al Jazeera, Russia’s defence ministry has accused Ukraine of poisoning some of its servicemen in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia in late July. In response to the alleged poisoning, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry said that the poisoning could have been caused by Russian forces eating expired canned meat.

The Russian defence ministry said a number of Russian servicemen had been taken to a military hospital with signs of serious poisoning on July 31. Tests showed a toxic substance, botulinum toxin type B, in their bodies, it said. “Russia is preparing supporting evidence with the results of all the analyses,” the ministry said in a statement. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron held a telephonic conversation on Friday to discuss the situation in Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement.

During the phone call, Putin stressed that “the systematic shelling by the Ukrainian military” of the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (NPP) creates the danger of a catastrophe that could lead to vast radiation contamination. “The discussion focused on various aspects of the situation around Ukraine. Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that the regular strikes on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant by the Ukrainian military create the danger of a major nuclear disaster that could lead to radiation contamination of vast territories,” the statement read.

Ukraine and Russia have recently exchanged accusations over shellings on the Zaporizhzhia NPP, which is one of the largest atomic power complexes in Europe and generates a quarter of Ukraine’s total electricity. In the phone call, Putin and Macron noted the importance of sending an IAEA mission to the Zaporizhzhia NPP as soon as possible to assess the real situation on the spot, the statement said.