Ukraine drone attack sparks fire at key Russian oil refinery

Kyiv’s latest onslaught connected Russia’s captious infrastructure hits 2nd lipid refinery successful abstraction of a week.

A Russian lipid refinery successful the confederate Volgograd portion caught occurrence aft being deed by debris from a Ukrainian drone attack.

Regional Governor Andrei Bocharov confirmed the overnight attack, saying connected Friday that the blaze was “promptly extinguished” and 1 injured idiosyncratic was hospitalised.

The onslaught was Ukraine’s latest salvo successful its campaign to destruct refineries, lipid depots and concern sites underpinning Russia’s warfare efforts.

Andriy Kovalenko, the caput of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, described the Volgograd refinery arsenic 1 of the largest successful Russia.

Earlier this week, Kyiv claimed to person struck and acceptable connected occurrence a Lukoil refinery successful the Nizhny Novgorod region, eastbound of Moscow. A drone onslaught past week forced a refinery successful Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, to suspend operations.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said connected Friday that 49 Ukrainian drones had been downed overnight, including 25 successful the confederate Rostov portion and 8 successful the Volgograd region.

Attack connected Odesa

Overnight, Russia launched a volley of drones astatine Ukraine’s confederate Odesa region, injuring 4 radical successful the metropolis of Chornomorsk, according to determination Governor Oleh Kiper.

The attacks besides partially disrupted energy supplies successful the metropolis and damaged its hospital, administrative building, atom warehouse, a location and respective trucks, helium said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s aerial unit said its defence systems changeable down 59 of 102 Russian drones overnight.

The onslaught came 1 time aft Russian drones killed 9 radical successful a onslaught connected a residential artifact successful the eastbound Ukrainian metropolis of Sumy.

After the attack, Andriy Yermak, caput of the statesmanlike office, accused Russia of launching Shahed drones charged with shrapnel “to summation the fig of civilian casualties”.

Trading accusations

On Friday, Russia’s Investigative Committee said it was probing the sidesplitting of 22 radical betwixt September and November successful an occupied Russian village. It said the fig includes 8 women who were allegedly raped earlier being killed.

Investigators said 1 of the Ukrainian soldiers allegedly liable for the killings was arrested successful the occidental portion of Kursk, wherever Ukraine controls dozens of borderline towns since launching an violative past year.

Russia and Ukraine person accused each different of sidesplitting civilians since the struggle began astir 3 years ago, the second claiming Moscow’s forces murdered hundreds of civilians successful the municipality of Bucha, adjacent Kyiv.

Moscow rejected the allegations and accused Kyiv of staging the footage, a assertion denied by respective autarkic fact-checking organisations and media outlets.

Source

:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies