Russia claimed to shoot down a cruise missile Sunday over the annexed Crimean peninsula and other missiles inside its borders, far from the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
The origins of the strikes were undetermined, and Ukraine has insisted it is containing its fighting to defensive battles within its own country.
The missile shot down over Crimea caused a brief suspension of traffic on the Kerch bridge, a critical supply route to Russia that was severely damaged last October by a massive explosion.
Ukraine for the first time appeared to take direct credit for that blast, which put the bridge out of commission for weeks.
“[It’s been] 273 days since [we] carried out the first strike on the Crimean bridge in order to disrupt the logistics for the Russians,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote in a Telegram post Saturday.
She named the attack in a list of Ukraine’s main achievements so far in the war, which marked 500 days on Saturday since Russia launched its official invasion.
She also listed the sinking in April of the Moskva cruiser, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
While Ukraine has said it hit the ship with missiles, Russia has never acknowledged the vessel was attacked and has claimed it caught fire and sank in a storm.
The Russian Foreign Ministry responded to Maliar by calling the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “terrorist regime” in an online statement.
Loss of the warship was seen as a significant symbolic defeat for the Russian forces.
Ukrainian forces that launched a counteroffensive to reclaim territory occupied by the Russians “have secured and retained the initiative … along most of the frontline,” according to an assessment released over the weekend by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
The counteroffensive has left “Russian forces focused almost entirely on trying to hold on to the Ukrainian lands they still occupy,” the Institute wrote. “With Western assistance, Ukraine has ensured its independence but faces the critical task of liberating the strategically vital territory still under Russian control.”
The interception of the missile over Crimea did not cause any damage or casualties, the Russian-appointed governor said.
One of the other missiles, shot down over the Russian region of Rostov, was Ukrainian, local authorities said, and damaged the roofs of several buildings.
The other two missiles were shot down, authorities said, over Russia’s Bryansk region which, like Rostov, borders Ukraine. The governor of Bryansk said one of the missiles destroyed a sawmill as it fell.
Officials in Russian regions and in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, have regularly blamed Ukraine for explosions, drone strikes and other incursions. Despite the annexation, Crimea remains internationally recognized as part of Ukraine.
The U.S. and other Western allies supplying Ukraine with weapons have made it a condition that the arms not be used to strike inside Russia in a potential escalation of the conflict.
The war in Ukraine is likely to dominate discussion at this week’s annual summit of NATO leaders, being held in Vilnius, Lithuania.
One of the issues facing the security alliance is whether to admit Ukraine as a member, which the Ukrainian president wants.
Some argue such a move would restrain Russian aggression in Europe, while others say it would further provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin.
President Biden said in a CNN interview broadcast Sunday that Ukraine was not ready for NATO membership and that the war must end first.
“I don’t think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war,” Biden said. “If the war is going on, then we’re all in war. We’re at war with Russia, if that were the case.”
In another development, one of five Ukrainian defense commanders who returned home from being held in Turkey said he would be returning to the battlefield.
The commander, Denys Prokopenko, was taken captive by Russia last year following an extended hold-out by Ukrainian forces of a steelworks plant in the port city of Mariupol in Donetsk.
“I am deeply convinced that the army is a team effort,” Prokopenko told Ukrainian media. “And from today we will continue the fight together with you. We will definitely have our say in battle.”
The five commanders were sent in September to Turkey, where they were supposed to stay until the end of the war but on Saturday, they arrived home in Ukraine.
Also in Donetsk, a region that is partially occupied by Russian forces, the death toll from a Russian missile strike on the city of Lyman rose to nine Sunday.
Lyman is located just a few miles from the war’s front line where Russian troops are fighting intensely in the forests of Kreminna.