Ukraine claims drones disabled oil facility; Russia says damage is light
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine and Russia traded attacks on each other’s territory Wednesday, including a second day of drone attacks against Russian oil facilities.
One of the Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in the Ryazan region, about 100 miles southeast of Moscow, causing a fire that was extinguished after a few hours, local governor Pavel Malkov said. A Ukrainian official with knowledge of intelligence operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the refinery was the target.
“We are systematically implementing a meticulously calculated strategy to reduce the economic potential of the Russian Federation,” the official said. “Our task is to deprive the enemy of resources and diminish the flow of oil money and fuel that Russia directly channels into war and the killing of our citizens.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry, however, maintained
that it had shot down all 65 of the drones launched at six Russian regions overnight.
It was the second attack on Russian territory in two days, after Ukrainian forces launched drones Tuesday against nine Russian cities and towns — some far inside the country — including the oil facilities at Nizhny Novgorod, which caught fire.
The two days of attacks represent Kyiv’s most wideranging assault on Russian infrastructure since the war started, sending a message of Ukrainian resilience ahead of Russia’ s elections, which are taking place over three days, from Friday to Sunday. On Wednesday, Ukraine’ s biggest attack was on the Voronezh region in southwest Russia, where 35 dr ones were intercepted, the Russian Defense Minis-try said. The Ukrainian official said that dr ones also tar-geted“a Russian Aerospace Forces base in Buturli-novka and a military air-field in Voronezh .” This in-formation could not be inde-pendently verified. Dr ones also attacked the Novoshakhtinsk oil refin-ery in the Rostov region of southwestern Russia, Rostov governor Vasily Go l-u be vs aid on Telegram, also temporarily putting it out of commission. Electronic jam ming equipment forced the dr ones to landon the terri-tory of the refinery without any injuries, but“techno-logical facilities of the enter-prise have been stopped ,” Mr. Go lu be vs aid, about which“the consequences are being clarified .” Ukraine’ s military intel-ligence service“could not confirm or deny its involve-ment in the operation ,” spokesman AndriyYusov said, adding that the facility was“used for military pur-poses .” Another drones truck the headquarters of the FSB,Russia’s domestic intelli-gence agency, in Bel go rod, near Ukraine, Russian news agency Tass initially reported, but it later re-moved the report from its website. Ukrainian officials re-ported Russian dr one and missile attacks in the Sumyand Donetsk regions, some of which hit residential buildings, killing half a dozen people.