Ukraine has targeted Russian energy facilities and a big oil refinery that feeds Vladimir Putin’s war machine in multiple waves of drone strikes, Kyiv has said.
The Ukrainian military said the strike on the refinery in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region had caused a large fire. A video posted on social media that showed orange flames lighting up the night sky in the city of Kstovo. Lukoil’s Norsi refinery, Russia’s fourth largest, is based in Kstovo, which lies east of Moscow and about 800 km (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed it had detected more than 100 drones in a major overnight attack, with the governor of the Smolensk region claiming one drone had been shot down near the largest nuclear power plant in Russia’s northwest.
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Reporting a “powerful fire” at the oil refinery in Kstovo, a city in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, Ukraine’s military said on Wednesday morning that it was still clarifying the extent of the damage but vowed to continue its attacks on facilities involved in supporting Russia’s war.
A Ukrainian military intelligence source claimed to the Kyiv Independent that Lukoil’s depot in Kstovo was targeted by four drones, all of which hit their target and caused “significant damage”. A drone strike also hit Russia’s Andreapol oil pumping station, part of an export route via the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, causing a leakage of oil products and a fire, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine told Reuters.
The attack also hit a Russian missile storage facility in Russia’s Tver region, causing a string of explosions, the source said.
Meanwhile, Russian petrochemicals giant Sibur said it had temporarily suspended operations at its plant in Kstovo on Wednesday morning, claiming that debris from a Ukrainian drone had caused a fire.
While Russia has targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure throughout its near three-year invasion, forcing millions of civilians to endure power cuts through the winter, Ukraine has increasingly been striking back with attacks on energy facilities deep inside Russian territory in recent months.
The governor of Russia’s western Smolensk region also claimed on Wednesday that air defence systems had destroyed a drone attempting to strike a nuclear power plant there. The plant was working normally, the RIA state news agency reported, citing its press service
The attack in Kstovo came just hours after reports that work at the Ryazan oil refinery – among Russia’s largest – had been suspended as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has credited Kyiv’s booming drone production capacity with enabling the recent strikes, saying on Sunday: “I would like to thank all developers and producers of our long-range drones and missiles.
“Everyone can see their effectiveness. Our weapons are bringing the war back to Russia and reducing Russia’s military potential.”
With new US president Donald Trump also suggesting that Russia’s energy sector could be further squeezed in a bid to bring Mr Putin to the negotiating table, the Kremlin is showing no sign of easing its grinding push for territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
