Russian drones strike Izmail port in southern Ukraine

KYIV: Russian drones struck the Danube river port of Izmail in southern Ukraine Wednesday, the region’s governor said, as Moscow continued to pound Kyiv’s vital export routes.

The Ukrainian military claimed 32 drones were downed during the attack, which the governor said injured several people and caused a fire.

“A total of seven civilians were injured as a result of Russian attack drones in the Izmail district. Six people in Reni and one in Izmail,” said Odesa region governor Oleg Kiper on social media.

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“Damage to port and other civil infrastructure was recorded,” he said.

Since pulling out of a UN-brokered deal allowing safe grain shipments via the Black Sea, Russia has ramped up attacks on Ukraine’s grain-exporting infrastructure in the southern Odesa and Mykolaiv regions.

Izmail, on the border with NATO member Romania, has become a major export route for Ukrainian agricultural products since Russia’s withdrawal from the grain deal in July.

Romania’s defence ministry said that an IAR 330 Puma identified fragments that “could have originated from a drone” on Wednesday in the localities of Nufaru and Victoria in Tulcea county, some distance from the Ukraine border.

The fragments were “scattered in an area of some tens of meters,” the statement said, adding another helicopter was sent to the area to search and gather the pieces for analysis.

The Defence Forces of Southern Ukraine said on Telegram that Wednesday’s attack on the Odesa region lasted four and a half hours.

The drones were “aimed at the civilian infrastructure of the Danube”, their update said.

Thirty-two Iranian-made Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles “were shot down by air defence forces”.

“The port infrastructure suffered damage from the strikes, and a fire… was extinguished promptly.”

Military spokesman Andriy Kovalyov said Russia had launched 44 drones in total since the start of the day, targeting both the southern region of Odesa and Sumy region in the northeast.

Since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February last year, NATO has been concerned to prevent the war from spilling over onto its territory.

Romanian soldiers on Saturday found fragments of a drone “similar to those used by the Russian army” across the border from Ukraine.

President Klaus Iohannis said the discovery indicated “there took place an absolutely unacceptable breach of the Romanian sovereign airspace”.