Russian warplane slams into residential building on its own soil for 2nd time in a week

A Russian warplane slammed into a residential building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk on Sunday, killing both crew members, authorities said. It was the second time in less than a week that a combat jet crashed in a residential area in Russia.

The Irkutsk region's governor, Igor Kobzev, said the Su-30 fighter jet came down on a private, two-storey building housing two families. He said there were no casualties on the ground as the building's five residents were out at the time of the crash.

He said the residents would be offered temporary accommodation and compensation.

The cause of the crash wasn't immediately known and an official probe has started. On Oct. 17, an Su-34 bomber crashed near an apartment building in the Sea of Azov port of Yeysk and exploded in a giant fireball, killing 15 and injuring another 19.

The crashes might reflect the growing strain that the fighting in Ukraine has put on the Russian air force.

The United Aircraft Corporation, a state-controlled conglomerate of Russian aircraft-making plants, said in a statement that the plane in Sunday's incident came down during a training flight before its delivery to the air force. The jet carried no weapons during the flight.

Surveillance camera videos posted on Russian social networks showed the fighter in a nearly vertical dive and then exploding. Other videos showed the building engulfed by flames and firefighters deployed to extinguish the blaze.

Sunday's crash was the 11th reported noncombat crash of a Russian warplane since Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights increased sharply during the fighting, so did the number of crashes.

Battle for the skies

Ukraine shot down 14 Russian "kamikaze" drones over Mykolaiv overnight, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram. The drones are designed to explode on impact and have hammered Ukraine's energy infrastructure this month.

On Thursday, the U.S. government alleged that Iran had sent trainers and technical support personnel into Crimea to help Russia mount attacks using Iranian-made drones.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyypledged his military would improve on an already good record of downing missiles with help from its partners.

Kurt Volker, a formerU.S. ambassador to NATO, said western countries needto step up their support for Ukraine's air defences.

"The number one thing today, and it's something we should have done months ago and I don't know why we did not, is to provide Ukraine far better air defences than they currently have," Volker toldCBC News' Rosemary Barton Live.

"Nothing can prevent every single drone, every single missile from getting through, but we can reduce the percentage that actually make it through. And this would be point air defence systems that are very effective, guns that actually are good against the Iranian drones, and some longer range air defence systems as well."

WATCH | Rocket attacks leave more than one million Ukrainian households without power:

Russia targets Ukrainian energy infrastructure in latest attacks

2 years ago

Duration 2:01

As the invasion of Ukraine enters its eighth month, Russia is targeting civilians and energy infrastructure. Experts say it's a key tactic by Putin, forcing Ukrainians to conserve energy for fears of a cold dark winter to come.

'Dirty bomb' claim rejected

Russia's Defence MinisterSergei Shoigu on Sunday alleged that Ukraine was preparing a "provocation" involving a "dirty bomb" a stark claim that was strongly rejected by Ukrainian and British officials amid soaring tensions as Moscow struggles to stem Ukrainian advances in the south.

A dirty bombisa device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste. It doesn't have the devastating effect of a nuclear explosion, but it could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.

Russia's defence ministry said Shoigu made the allegationin phone calls with his counterparts from the United States, Britain, France and Turkey.

Russian authorities repeatedly have made allegations that Ukraine could detonate a dirty bomb in a false flag attack and blame it on Moscow. Ukrainian authorities, in turn, have accused the Kremlin of hatching such a plan.

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace strongly rejected Shoigu's claim during their call and warned Moscow against using it as a pretext for escalation, the British Ministry of Defencesaid.

Zelenskyy asserted the international community was unlikely to believe Shoigu's claims, and implied that Moscow was setting the stage for deploying a radioactive device on Ukrainian soil.

"If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means only one thing: that Russia has already prepared all of it," Zelenskyy said in a televised address Sunday evening.

Ukraine's top diplomat, Dmytro Kuleba, said his country neither has dirty bombs nor plans to acquire them.

Russia targets civilian buildings, infrastructure

Under pressure in the south of Ukraine, Russia fired missiles and drones into Ukrainian-held Mykolaiv on Sunday, destroying an apartment block in the ship-building city near the front.

The attack propelled shrapnel and debris across a plaza and into neighbouring buildings where windows buckled and walls cracked. Cars were crushed under the rubble, Reuters witnessed. No fatalities were reported.

Mykolaiv lies roughly 35 km northwest of the front line to occupied Kherson, the southern region that is the target of a major offensive by Ukrainian forces to retake territory Russia captured soon after the Feb. 24 invasion.

Ukraine's advances in recent weeks around Kherson and in the country's northeast have been met with intensifying Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure, which have destroyed about 40 per centof Ukraine's power system ahead of winter.

That figure is a jump from earlier in the week, when Zelenskyy said 30 per cent of the country's power stations had been destroyed since Oct.10.

More than a million people were without power, presidential adviser Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. A city official said strikes could leave Kyiv without power and heat for days or weeks.

Moscow has acknowledged targeting energy infrastructure but denies targeting civilians.