A Russian soldier in occupied Crimea opened fire on members of his own unit and then on civilians in the coastal city of Sevastopol, killing four people and wounding several others before being arrested, according to the Russian-installed governor of the Sevastopol region.
Mikhail Razvozhayev said the serviceman killed one fellow soldier and wounded another before turning his weapon on civilians, killing three and wounding three more. «A tragedy in Sevastopol... According to initial information, a soldier opened fire on his fellow servicemen, killing one person, before attacking civilians and killing three of them», Razvozhayev wrote. He said the attacker had been detained and that all circumstances and causes of the incident were being established.
Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has for weeks been a focus of Ukrainian strikes aimed at disrupting Russian military logistics and cutting off fuel and electricity supplies to occupying forces. The shooting came as the war entered its 1,624th day, with both sides continuing long-range attacks across the front line.
Overnight, Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more in Kyiv and the surrounding region, Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday. Kyiv's military administration said the barrage damaged residential buildings and several warehouses. «The enemy is once again deliberately striking civilians and civilian infrastructure», the administration said.
In a separate wave of attacks, Ukrainian drones struck logistics centres across Russia, including several operated by the online retailer Wildberries. The company said a warehouse near St Petersburg caught fire with no casualties. In the Tver region, around 180 km north-west of Moscow, a Wildberries facility in the rural area of Emmaus was damaged. In the Moscow region, a drone attack on the city of Chekhov set a warehouse alight and killed five people in the Novoselki industrial zone. Another Wildberries warehouse near Krasny Bor in north-western Russia was damaged, wounding one person. A drone also fell on a distribution centre near St Petersburg operated by Lenta, one of the country's largest food retailers, causing a fire and one injury, the company said.
Ukraine's military intelligence, meanwhile, said a North Korean missile unit had begun deploying to western Russia and could be equipped with 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers for strikes against Ukraine. Andrii Cherniak, an official at Ukraine's military intelligence agency, told Reuters that Russia planned to base the unit of about 90 North Korean personnel in the Voronezh region as part of its 112th Missile Brigade. Pyongyang had already sent a new batch of 40 KN-23 and KN-24 missiles and personnel to Russia, but the final configuration of the deployment and the total number of missiles would be confirmed next month, he said. Russia has fired scores of North Korean ballistic missiles at Ukraine since late 2023.
Ukraine also accused Russia of a war crime after video emerged showing a drone chasing a street vendor in the southern city of Kherson and exploding. Police said the man, in his 50s, survived but suffered shock and shrapnel injuries after diving under a vehicle for shelter. The attack took place on Tuesday, according to Ukraine's police and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the incident. «Today, many were shocked by yet another video of the drone safari Russians are carrying out against civilians in Kherson», he said. «We must act and support life in ways that force Russia to think seriously about peace rather than expanding the range of its drones.»
Sybiha said the attack was part of a deliberate Russian campaign to intimidate civilians. «This barbaric Russian war crime in Kherson demands international condemnation and justice, but thousands of similar crimes never come to the public eye», he said, adding that the pilot of the drone would have known the target was a civilian.