The Ukrainian Drone attack sets fire to the Russian oil deposit while Zelenskyy announces a prisoner exchange
A Ukrainian drone attack overnight against an oil deposit near the Black Station of Sochi in Russia launched a major fire, Russian officials announced on Sunday, while the two countries were exchanging strikes and the Ukrainian president announced an exchange of prisoners.
More than 120 firefighters tried to turn off the fire, triggered after the debris of a slaughtered drone hit a fuel reservoir, said regional governor of Krasnodar, Veniamin Kondratyev, on Telegram. Videos on social networks seemed to show huge smoke pillars that escape above the oil depot.
Civil Russia Aviation Authority, RosaviatsSia, temporarily stopped flights at Sochi airport.
Further north, authorities in the Voronezh region reported that four people had been injured in another Ukrainian drone strike.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses had killed 93 Ukrainian drones on Russia and the Black Sea during the night on Sunday.
Russian strike in southern Ukraine
Meanwhile, in the south of Ukraine, a Russian missile strike struck a residential area in the city of Mykolav, according to state emergency services, injuring seven people.
Ukrainian Air Force said on Sunday that Russia launched 76 drones and seven missiles against Ukraine. He said 60 drones and a missile were intercepted, but 16 others and six missiles have reached targets in eight locations.
Reciprocal attacks have ended one of the deadliest weeks in Ukraine in recent months, after a Russian drone and missile attack killed 31 people on Thursday, including five children and more than 150 injuries.
They come then that US President Donald Trump gave Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday a shorter deadline – August 8 – for peace efforts to progress.
US President Donald Trump, appearing alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, journalists told a deadline that he put on Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine, adding: “We just don’t see any progress.”
Trump said Thursday that Steve Witkoff’s special envoy went to Russia to push Moscow to accept a cease-fire in his war with Ukraine and threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made.
Ukraine and Russia agree on the exchange of prisoners
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange 1,200 prisoners following their last series of negotiations in Istanbul in July.
“There is an agreement to exchange 1,200 people,” he wrote on X, saying that the lists of people to exchange were under work and that they were working to “unlock the return of our civilians”.
There was no immediate comments from Russia.
Zelenskyy also said that he had discussed the best Ukrainian officials “the negotiation track, in particular, the implementation of agreements concluded during meetings with the Russian party in Istanbul, as well as the preparations for a new meeting”.
This year, each of the three cycles of talks between countries has led to prisoners, but has given no breakthrough to reach a ceasefire.
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