A blaze has torn through an arms depot deep inside Russia, triggering explosions and the closure of a major highway, after Ukraine launched more than 100 drones overnight.
The depot appeared to be close to another that was struck by Ukrainian drones early on Wednesday, injuring 13 people and also causing a huge fire.
Russian authorities closed a 62-mile stretch of a highway and evacuated passengers from a nearby rail station on Saturday after the fire caused a series of explosions.
Posts on the messaging app Telegram said a missile depot was struck near the town of Toropets, in Russia’s Tver region about 240 miles north west of Moscow and about 300 miles from the Ukrainian border.
Unverified images circulating on Telegram showed a large ball of flame rising into the night sky and dozens of smoke trails from detonations.
An ammunition depot and missile arsenal in south-western Russia also caught fire in a separate attack on Saturday in the Krasnodar region, triggering evacuations after the blaze caused a series of blasts.
Videos on social media showed bright orange clouds rising over the horizon, as dull thuds of detonations sounded almost continuously.
Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed that its forces shot down 101 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory and occupied Crimea overnight. There were no immediate reports of casualties in either Russian region.
Meanwhile, a 12-year-old boy and two elderly women were killed as Russian missiles struck Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine, overnight, governor Serhii Lysak said Saturday.
Mr Lysak said the missiles hit “in the middle of the night, when the city slept”, injuring three more people, destroying two buildings and damaging another 20.
President Volodmyr Zelensky is travelling to the US next week and will present President Joe Biden with a “victory plan” that will include long-range striking capabilities and other weapons long sought by Kyiv, and will serve as the basis for any future negotiation with Russia.
He has regularly alluded to the plan’s preparation but has not publicly outlined its contents, saying only that it contains terms acceptable for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia after a two-and-a-half-year war following Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
“This will be the start and foundation for talking in any format with Russia. In any format, with any of its representatives, because there will be a plan and something to show,” Mr Zelensky said in a briefing with reporters on Friday.
Mr Zelensky said he will present the plan to Mr Biden and Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Mr Zelensky said he also plans to meet Ms Harris’s opponent in the November election, former president Donald Trump.
He said US reluctance so far in allowing Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia stems from fears of escalation from Moscow, a major global nuclear power. Ukraine has had to use its own capabilities to conduct strikes inside Russian territory.
“I think that Biden is really getting information from his entourage today that there may be an escalation. But, and this is important, not everyone around him thinks so. And this is already an achievement that not all of his entourage thinks so,” Mr Zelensky said.
But the longer Western partners wait to allow the use of long-range missiles, the more tactically obsolete their value will become, Mr Zelensky said.
