A state of emergency was declared on July 7 in parts of Russia's Voronezh region near the border with Ukraine following a suspected Ukrainian drone attack that set an ammunition depot on fire, regional authorities said.
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Regional Governor Aleksandr Gusev said Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian air-defense systems and that the fire was ignited by debris that fell on an ammunition depot in the Podgornensky district overnight.
Videos posted on Telegram purported to show at least one drone heading toward the depot and then a long series of blasts could be heard while plumes of black smoke were rising in the air.
Gusev said there were no immediate reports of casualties. Later in the morning, he announced that he had declared a state of emergency in the settlement where the burning depot was located, without identifying it by name.
The road that leads into the area has been closed and authorities have begun evacuating residents to temporary accommodation centers, reports said.
Ukraine, whose energy and civilian infrastructure has been decimated by months of intensive Russian drone and missile strikes, has in turn started targeting industrial facilities, mainly oil refining capabilities that work for the military, inside Russia.
On July 7, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) claimed in a message on Telegram that its agents on the previous day had struck a logistics center in Debaltseve, in the Russia-occupied part of Donetsk, that housed tank equipment and ammunition.
HUR also claimed that an electronic warfare jamming communication station was destroyed in Novoluhansk in the occupied Luhansk region. The claims could not be independently verified.
Separately, Ukraine's Air Force said on July 7 that its air-defense systems had repelled a fresh Russian missile and drone attack on several regions earlier in the day.
"The enemy attacked with 2 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones," the Air Force reported on Telegram, adding that 13 drones were shot down in the Kirovohrad, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Poltava regions.
Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said on Telegram that its Iskander missiles had destroyed two Ukrainian launchers for Patriot surface-to-air missile systems and a Giraffe radar station in the village of Yuzhne in the Odesa region.
However, Ukrainian Air Force commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk asserted on Telegram that Russian forces had struck decoy launchers aimed at fooling Moscow into firing off expensive missiles at fake targets.
Claims on either side could not be independently verified.