Ukraine updates: Drones strike Russia's Belgorod and Samara

Russian defense systems shot down on Saturday a barrage of Ukrainian missiles over the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the city's Moscow-installed governor said.

"According to initial information, more than 10 missiles have been shot down," Sevastopol's governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram. A woman and a child were injured with shrapnel from the downed missiles, he added.

Infrastructure was also damaged in the attack, including an office building and a gas line.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine has been regularly targeting the peninsula with missiles and drone strikes.

Local resistance fighters and Ukrainian military intelligence carried out an operation in the Russian-occupied  Ukrainian city of Melitopol. Two explosions were set off on Friday, the intelligence service said.

"According to preliminary data, about 20 Russian servicemen, two Kamaz trucks and one UAZ Patriot car were at the epicenter of the explosions," the military intelligence added.

Melitopol, a city 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Zaporizhzhia, fell to Russian troops in the first weeks of their invasion in 2022. It is an area of active Ukrainian resistance movement.

In November, a blast in Melitopol resulted in the death of at least three Russian servicemen, according to Ukrainian military intelligence. It described an attack as "revenge" carried out by local Ukrainian groups.

The US Congress on Friday approved a $228 million (€211 million) security aid package for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the Baltic Security Initiative. All three Baltic states are NATO members and neighbors of Russia.

"Support from the US has significantly helped Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fast track several military infrastructure and capability development projects," Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said.

"The good news is that the support is slightly higher than last year. This (financial aid) sends a clear signal that the US, the largest ally in NATO, is committed to the security and stability of our region," he added.

Launched in 2020, the Baltic Security Initiative (BSI) is a US Department of Defense initiative to support the development of military capabilities and interoperability among the armed forces of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Three Baltic states have been among the biggest supporters of Ukraine in its war against Russia, in terms of GDP. To date, Estonia has provided Ukraine with military aid of about €400 million, which is more than 1% of Estonia's GDP.

Russia's defense ministry said its forces had taken control of the village of Krasnoye just west of Bakhmut.

Russia won control of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region in May last year after a grinding battle that lasted for months.

"The village of Krasnoye in the Donetsk People's Republic was liberated," Russia's defense ministry said.

Ukraine did not immediately comment on the Russian statement.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has insisted that Kyiv had nothing to do with the deadly terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall on Friday night.

"Let's be straight about this: Ukraine had absolutely nothing to do with these events," Podolyak said in a video message posted on Telegram. "We have a full-scale, all-out war with the regular Russian army and with the Russian Federation as a country. Everything will be decided on the battlefield."

The Islamic State affiliate ISIS-K has officially claimed responsibility for the attack which left at least 100 concert-goers dead, a claim which the United States has said it deems credible.

Nevertheless, voices in Moscow have already begun to point the finger at Kyiv.

According to the Russian news agency Interfax, the Russian security service FSB has claimed that four suspected perpetrators apprehended on Saturday morning were heading towards the Ukrainian border, where they were said to have "contacts."

The Russian RIA news agency quoted Russian lawmaker and former general Andrei Kartapolov as saying that, if Ukraine is found to be behind the attack, there should be "a clear answer on the battlefield."

Ukrainian intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov dismissed the suggestions as "absurd," telling the BBC that it "would suggest they were stupid or suicidal" since the Ukraine-Russia border is an active frontline "full of military and special services personnel."

On Friday night, Ukrainian military intelligence had suggested that Moscow itself was behind the attack which it described as "a planned and deliberate provocation by the Russian special services on [Vladimir] Putin's orders" in order to "further escalate and expand the war" with Ukraine.

While there is no indication as yet that this is true either, the Kremlin does have form for such "false flag" operations. In September 1999, over 350 people were killed in a series of appartment bombings, including in Moscow, which then prime minister Putin blamed without evidence on Chechen militants as a pretext to launch the Second Chechen War.

The Ukrainian Air Force says it intercepted 31 out of a total of 34 Russian drones launched against its territory overnight.

The drones were shot down over central, southern and southeastern Ukraine.

In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, still reeling from Thursday night's strikes, mayor Ihor Terekhov reported 15 explosions as a result of further Russian rocket attacks.

"There are problems with electricity supplies," he said. "The enemy has purposely targeted energy infrastructure."

The attacks were on a much smaller scale than those 24 hours earlier, when around 150 drones, rockets and cruise missiles struck targets across Ukraine, damaging the country's largest hydroelectric power station and dam on the Dnipro River.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces were unable to adequately defend the entire country because Western allies had not provided air defense systems in sufficient quantities.

Ukrainian drones have attacked two oil refineries in the Russian region of Samara on the River Volga, one thousand kilometers east of the frontlines in Ukraine, according to Russian authorities.

One attack caused a fire at the Kuibyshev refinery, which local governor Dmitry Azarov later confirmed had been put out with no casualties.

The refinery, run by Russian oil giant Rosneft, is one of the largest in the region and has a production capacity of seven million tons per year, according to its official website.

A simultaneous attack on another refinery in the region "was repelled without damaging the technological equipment," Azarov said.

It's the second time this month that Ukraine has struck targets in Samara after damaging a railway bridge in the region on March 3.

Russia authorities say Ukrainian air attacks on the Russian border region of Belgorod have left two people dead and seven injured.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that two districts in his region as well as Belgorod city, had been hit by drones and other aerial ordnance.

"It's shaping up to be a difficult morning," Gladkov wrote on Telegram, elaborating: "As a result of an air attack by Ukrainian armed forces on Belgorod, three balconies collapsed in an apartment building. One of these apartments was occupied by a married couple. To much grief, the man died from his injuries on the spot.

He posted a photo of a residential building with the facade partially destroyed and said a second man had been killed in a drone strike outside the city.

mf/lo (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)