Russia successively announced that it had shot down a first, then a second Ukrainian missile on Friday July 28, in the south-west of its territory, near the border with Ukraine. “The Kyiv regime carried out a terrorist attack against residential infrastructure in the city of Taganrog using an S-200 air defense missile converted to a strike version,” the Russian Defense Ministry first said on Telegram. “Russian air defense systems detected the Ukrainian missile and intercepted it in flight,” the ministry added, noting that the debris “fell on the territory of Taganrog.”
According to Vassili Golubev, the governor of the Rostov-on-Don region where this city of 250,000 inhabitants is located, at least 15 people were injured near a cafe. “At present, 15 people […] have been slightly injured by shards of glass,” he said on Telegram. He had initially spoken of a rocket having “probably exploded in the center of Taganrog”.
The Russian army then said it shot down a second missile near Azov, about 40 kilometers east of Taganrog, without causing any casualties. “The wreckage of the downed Ukrainian missile fell in a deserted area,” she said on Telegram. Taganrog is located about fifty kilometers from the Ukrainian border, on the road leading to the port of Mariupol, occupied by Russian forces after a devastating siege in 2022.
Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022, several cities in southwestern Russia have experienced deadly accidents linked to military activities. Fifteen people were killed in October following the crash of a plane of Russian forces in Yeisk, a town in the same region. The device, filled with fuel, was embedded in a bar of buildings before catching fire, setting the building ablaze.
Ukrainian border regions further north-west, notably that of Belgorod, are regularly the target of Ukrainian bombardments. Russian authorities also frequently announce the destruction of Ukrainian drones. The Ministry of Defense thus assured on Friday that it had intercepted one of these devices in the Moscow region.
