It is day 515 of the Ukraine war. Russia has once again struck Ukraine with Shahed drones. In Ukraine’s Odesa region, drones hit infrastructrure objects, including a grain hangar.

Drones struck Moscow overnight, damaging two non-residential buildings. Another UAV fell on a cemetery to the northwest of the Russian capital.

A Ukrainian drone hit an ammo depot in Russia-annexed Crimea.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov has stated that Ukrainian pilots will start training to fly F-16 jets in August.

Vladimir Putin wrote an article dubbed “Russia and Africa: Joining Efforts for Peace, Progress and a Successful Future”, where he explained the reasons for the termination of the Black Sea grain deal.

Read more about what happened overnight in Novaya-Europe’s round-up.

Russia attacks Ukraine with Shahed drones

Air-raid warnings sounded off in Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Sumy, and Donetsk regions overnight as the Ukrainian command reported a Russian drone attack on the country.

Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, reported that several drones were taken down, but some of them hit their targets. He added that the Iranian-made Shahed drones had hit infrastructure objects.

Oleh Kiper, Odesa regional governor, said that the drones had targeted ports in the region. Six people were injured in the attacks, and a grain hangar was destroyed.

The administration of the Sumy region also reported that a drone had been taken down there.

Drone attack on Moscow

Drones hit two non-residential buildings in Moscow overnight, state news agency TASS reported, citing emergency services. Another drone fell on a cemetery in the Zelenograd district of Moscow (located to the northwest of the capital), state news agency RIA Novosti wrote.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin stated that the attack had taken place at about 4 AM. There was no major damage and no one was injured, the mayor added.

The Russian Defence Ministry accused Kyiv of carrying out the attack. The ministry stated that air-defence forces and electronic warfare units had taken down the drones targeting Moscow.

Western military experts have pointed out that there are Defence Ministry facilities located near one of the drone attack sites in southwestern Moscow.

The National Defence Management Centre is less than 200 metres away from the site, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute Rob Lee wrote on Twitter.

Investigative journalist Christo Grozev has noticed that the attack site is just across from the headquarters of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) cyber offence unit.

He added that this location houses the Military University and “several top-secret GRU facilities, including the head of their illegals [intelligence agents] program”.

“If Ukraine hit that building complex, the symbolic damage to MoD/GRU will be very significant,” Grozev wrote.

Drone attack destroys ammo depot in Crimea

Governor of the annexed Crimea Sergey Aksyonov has reported a Ukrainian drone attack on the peninsula.

The Russian Defence Ministry has stated that 17 drones attacked Crimea overnight; 14 were taken down by electronic warfare units and three were destroyed by air-defence systems. Three drones reached the peninsula.

Ukrainian defence minister: Ukrainian pilots’ F-16 training to start in August

Ukrainian Defence Minister Olexii Reznikov has stated in an interview with CNN that Ukrainian pilots will begin training to operate F-16s in August.

Reznikov said that the training will take “a minimum of 6 months” and that pilots could be operating F-16s in the skies of Ukraine by spring of next year.

He added, however, that Ukraine still needs additional infrastructure to operate the jets.

The training will likely be held in Denmark and the Netherlands, as well as possibly in the United Kingdom or Poland, the Ukrainian defence minister said.

Putin publishes article on Russia-Africa relations where he explains the termination of the grain deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin has written an article dubbed “Russia and Africa: Joining Efforts for Peace, Progress and a Successful Future”. The article was published on the Kremlin’s website.

The article was written in the run-up to the second Russia-Africa Summit and Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum, which will take place on 27-28 July in St. Petersburg.

He touched upon the Black Sea grain deal: “This ‘deal’, however, while it was publicly advertised by the West as a gesture of goodwill that benefited Africa, has in fact been shamelessly used solely for the enrichment of large US and European businesses that exported and resold grain from Ukraine,” Putin wrote.

He reiterated that the conditions of the deal had not been fulfilled, adding that over 200,000 tonnes of mineral fertilisers, which Russia attempted to “supply free of charge to the poorest countries in need”, were blocked in European ports.

Putin also wrote of Russia’s plans to “shape a non-discriminatory agenda for cooperation” with its African partners. “Bringing humanitarian, cultural, sports and mass media cooperation to a whole new level would serve our common interests,” the president said.