(Reuters) – A “swarm” of Ukrainian drones targeted Russian steelmaker Novolipetsk Steel’s facility in a raid in the early hours of Sunday, but it sustained no serious damage, a company spokesperson said.
The attack achieved no results other than causing extra welding work, the spokesperson said. Igor Artamonov, the governor of the Lipetsk region in western Russia where the steel mill is located, said in a separate statement that nine drones had been downed over the steel mill.
Kyiv does not officially confirm or deny such attacks, but says the facilities being hit are supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine and are thus legitimate military targets.
NLMK denies cooperating with the defence ministry, saying that its Russian operations are not capable of producing military-grade heavy steels and it does not supply the military.
Russia’s defence ministry said earlier that air defence systems had destroyed 36 drones launched by Ukraine overnight targeting several regions in Russia’s southwest, including Lipetsk.
The ministry also said that Russian forces had taken over the villages of Spirne and Novooleksandrivka, which are in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Russian news agency RIA reported, the latest in a string of such incremental territorial claims.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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