Kyiv, Ukraine: Ukraine said it had struck part of Russia’s air defense system in annexed Crimea overnight, as Moscow said it repelled a major attempted missile strike on the peninsula on Monday.
Kyiv has increased attacks on the Black Sea peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014, since it launched a counteroffensive against Russian forces earlier this year.
“The Armed Forces successfully hit a strategic object of the air defense system on the western coast of occupied Crimea,” the Ukrainian army’s strategic communications unit said on social media.
It gave no further details and Russia gave no official comment.
Later on Monday, Russia said its air defenses had successfully shot down eight Ukrainian missiles fired at the peninsula.
“On October 30, at around 13:00 (1000 GMT), an attempted attack by the Kyiv regime with eight Storm Shadow cruise missiles at targets on the Crimean peninsula was stopped,” Russia’s defense ministry said.
“As a result of air defense systems repelling the attack, all missiles were shot down,” it added.
Storm Shadows are British-supplied missile systems with a range of over 250 kilometers (155 miles) that enable Kyiv to hit targets deep behind the frontlines in the east and south of Ukraine.
One person was injured from falling debris, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol said.
Russian military bloggers had overnight reported Ukraine was stepping up its attacks on the peninsula.
The influential Rybar Telegram channel — which is close to the Russian army — said Kyiv had launched a “combined attack.”
It alleged Ukraine had launched two US ATACMS missiles which fell near the village of Olenivka, on the western coast of Crimea.
Rybar said Russian forces were not able to down the missiles “but thanks to measures taken earlier there was no serious damage.”
The social media account alleged that “half an hour later” Black Sea Fleet sailors discovered three Ukrainian naval drones near Sevastopol.
Rybar said one of them was “destroyed,” while another two tried to enter the Bay of Khersones before being shot at and sunk by Russian forces.
Ukraine has regularly targeted Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.
In September, Kyiv said it had hit a symbolic army headquarters in Sevastopol.
Ukraine says hit Russian air defense system in Crimea
Ukraine says hit Russian air defense system in Crimea
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
