WORLD NEWS: UKRAINE STRIKES RUSSIAN OIL REFINERY, TRIGGERING FIRE
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According to Russian and Ukrainian officials on Thursday, an oil refinery in southern Russia caught fire overnight as a result of a large Ukrainian drone and missile attack.
Throughout the nearly three-year conflict, Kyiv has attacked a number of Russian energy infrastructures, claiming the strikes were justifiable reprisals for Moscow’s extensive attacks on its own electrical grid.
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, it launched a nocturnal attack on the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in the southern Rostov area of Russia.
The site is “used to meet the needs of the Russian armed forces,” it said, adding: “A fire has been confirmed in the area of the facility.”
The Russian governor of the Rostov region, Yuri Slyusar, had earlier reported a fire at the site after a “massive attack by the enemy, who used more than three dozen drones and three missiles.”
Posts on his Telegram channel indicate that the refinery fire, which is 200 kilometres from the closest Ukrainian positions (125 miles) but 10 kilometres (six miles) from the international border with Ukraine, raged for more than six hours.
Pictures posted on Russian social media showed heavy grey smoke rising into the air from a massive, brilliant fire that was reportedly burning at the facility.
AFP was unable to confirm the pictures.
AFP was informed by a source in Ukraine’s SBU security services that “significant damage” had been caused by the combined missile and drone attack.
“SBU drones first overloaded the Russian air defences protecting the plant. By doing so, they created a window of opportunity for Ukrainian missiles, which the SBU and the Navy jointly used in the next stage,” the source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine fired a total of 84 drones towards its territory overnight. It said 36 were destroyed over the Rostov region, which borders Ukraine and is the military headquarters for Moscow’s offensive.
Others were destroyed over the Bryansk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Tambov and Krasnodar regions, the defence ministry said.
Russia’s border regions are frequently targets by Ukrainian aerial attacks, and both sides have escalated their bombardments over the last few months.
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