Ukraine said on Sunday that it had targeted a major Russian explosives factory located some 750 kilometers from the border with attack drones during the night.
An SBU security source told AFP the drones struck the Sverdlov explosives factory in Dzerzhinsk, just outside the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.
Russian authorities confirmed that drones targeted the area, but said the attack was foiled.
“Air defense and electronic warfare equipment repelled a drone attack on the territory of the Dzerzhinsk industrial zone,” Gleb Nikitin, governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, said on Telegram.
“Four employees of the fire station, located on the territory of the industrial enterprise, were slightly injured by shrapnel from falling debris,” he added.
The United States and the European Union have sanctioned the Sverdlov factory, one of Russia’s largest manufacturers of military explosives.
Images posted on Russian social media show a large explosion in the area and small drones shot down by air defense systems. AFP was not immediately able to verify these images.
kyiv did not specify the possible damage of the attack on the factory’s production capacities.
Previously, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had shot down 110 Ukrainian drones overnight over several regions, including one over Moscow.
Ukrainian forces regularly launch drone attacks inside Russian territory, seeking to strike energy and military sites that kyiv says are key to supplying Moscow’s invading army.
