Moscow, Aug 4: An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on an oil depot near Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi sparked a major fire, Russian officials said on Sunday, as the two countries traded strikes and the Ukrainian president announced a prisoner exchange.
More than 120 firefighters attempted to extinguish the blaze, which was caused by debris from a downed drone striking a fuel tank, Krasnodar regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said on Telegram. Videos on social media appeared to show huge pillars of smoke billowing above the oil depot.
Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, temporarily stopped flights at Sochi’s airport.
Farther north, authorities in the Voronezh region reported that four people were wounded in another Ukrainian drone strike.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences shot down 93 Ukrainian drones over Russia and the Black Sea overnight into Sunday.
Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, a Russian missile strike hit a residential area in the city of Mykolaiv, according to the State Emergency Services, wounding seven people.
The Ukrainian air force said on Sunday Russia launched 76 drones and seven missiles against Ukraine. It said 60 drones and one missile were intercepted, but 16 others and six missiles hit targets across eight locations.
The reciprocal attacks came at the end of one of the deadliest weeks in Ukraine in recent months, after a Russian drone and missile attack on Thursday killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded over 150.
The continued attacks come after US President Donald Trump last week gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a shorter deadline — August 8 — for peace efforts to make progress. Trump has threatened to impose new economic sanctions on Russia if progress is not made, while expressing doubt about how effective they would be.
“You know, they are wily characters, and they are pretty good at avoiding sanctions, so we will see what happens,” Trump said on Sunday evening of the Russians.
He said his special envoy Steve Witkoff may travel to Russia on Wednesday or Thursday, the final days before his new deadline.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Ukraine and Russia have agreed to exchange 1,200 prisoners following their latest round of negotiations in Istanbul in July.
“There is an agreement to exchange 1,200 people,” he wrote on X, saying that the lists of individuals to be swapped were being worked on and that they were working to “unblock the return of our civilians”.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Zelenskyy also said he discussed with top Ukrainian officials “the negotiation track — specifically, the implementation of the agreements reached during the meetings with the Russian side in Istanbul, as well as preparations for a new meeting”.
Each of the three rounds of talks between the countries this year has resulted in prisoner exchanges but yielded no breakthrough in reaching a ceasefire.(AP)
