Ukrainian drone crash sets alight oil refinery in Russia
RIA reported that three containers with diesel fuel and one with fuel oil were consumed by the fire at the Pervyi Zavod refinery in Kaluga
A Ukraine drone attack set an oil refinery in Russia’s Kaluga region on fire, RIA state news agency reported on Friday, citing emergency services sources.
Vladislav Shapsha, governor of the Kaluga region which borders the broader Moscow region, said on the Telegram messaging app that the fire was promptly extinguished. He did not say at what facility it took place.
RIA reported that three containers with diesel fuel and one with fuel oil were consumed by the fire at the Pervyi Zavod refinery in Kaluga.
Shapsha said there were no casualties in the attack.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv. Drone attacks on energy facilities inside Russia’s territory have become more frequent in the past few months.
Ukraine has said that while its attacks do not target civilians, destroying Russia’s military, transport and energy infrastructure undermines Moscow’s overall war efforts.
A Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv injured two people and set three houses on fire in the early hours of Friday, local officials said.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, which lies just 30 km from the Russian border, is particularly exposed to aerial attacks and has been badly damaged as Moscow has stepped up its airstrikes in recent months.
Two people, including an 11-year-old child, were shell-shocked, Governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Mayor Ihor Terekhov said an S-300 missile crashed into the city, damaging 26 buildings, destroying two of them completely. He did not clarify what those buildings were.
A Reuters cameraman at the scene saw fires raging in what appeared to be residential homes at dawn. The emergency services raced to put out the fires, working among the rubble.
Russia launched two S-300/S-400 missiles at the region overnight, Ukrainian air force spokesperson Illya Yevlash said in a television broadcast. It was unclear where the second one landed.
Another guided bomb attack damaged around 25 buildings when it landed near an infrastructure facility in the town of Derhachi near the Russian border, Syniehubov said.
Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago, stepped up the intensity of its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine in March this year.
Electricity infrastructure has been badly damaged, forcing authorities to introduce rolling blackouts in Kharkiv and the surrounding region, raising fears about what lies in store when energy consumption rises later this year.
In the southern regions, the air force intercepted all 10 drones fired by Russia at the regions of Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson.
Moscow denies targeting civilians in its attacks on Ukraine, but hundreds of civilians have died.
It says its strikes on the power grid are legitimate and has cast several major recent strikes as retaliation for Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries.
Zelenskyy said on Thursday his country’s army is facing “a really difficult situation” in eastern regions where troops are battling to hold at bay an intense Russian push along parts of the front line.
Russia has sought to exploit Ukraine’s shortages of ammunition and manpower as the flow of Western supplies since the outbreak of the war petered out, assembling large troop concentrations in the east as well as in the north and gaining an edge on the battlefield, Zelenskyy said.
But a massive new US military aid package is coming, and it will turn the tide, he said at a news conference in Kyiv with visiting President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola.
“With an increase in the supply of weapons, we will be able to stop them in the east. As of now, they seized the initiative there,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia is pressing hard in parts of eastern Ukraine in an effort to drive deeper into the Donetsk region, which it partly occupies.
The Ukrainian army is on the back foot, scrambling to build fortified defensive lines, and engaged in intense combat.