An oil refinery in Russia’s southern Volgograd region caught fire after an overnight Ukrainian drone attack, but the blaze has since been extinguished, the regional governor said on Friday.
Andrei Bocharov, the governor, stated in a message on the Telegram app that Russian air defenses had repelled an attack by eight drones on his region.
“As a result of falling debris from one of the drones, a fire broke out at an oil refinery, which was promptly extinguished. One injured refinery worker was hospitalized,” he said.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, said on Telegram that the Volgograd oil refinery, which he described as one of Russia’s largest, had been struck.
SHOT, a Russian news outlet with contacts in the security services, reported that four Ukrainian drones had been destroyed over a second refinery in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow.
Ukraine has frequently carried out air attacks on Russian refineries, oil depots, and industrial sites in an attempt to cripple key infrastructure supporting Russia’s war effort.
This week, Ukraine claimed to have struck and set fire to a Lukoil refinery, Russia’s fourth largest, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow.
Sources at Lukoil denied that the NORSI refinery was hit, and said production was not affected. Petrochemical company Sibur confirmed that a drone strike and fire had occurred at its nearby plant.
Russia is currently processing more crude oil through its refineries in an effort to boost fuel exports after new U.S. sanctions on Russian tankers and traders made exports of unprocessed crude more difficult, sources told Reuters this week.
A Ukrainian drone attack last week forced a refinery in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, to suspend operations.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Friday that 49 Ukrainian drones had been downed over the country overnight, including 25 in the southern Rostov region and eight in the Volgograd region.
Drones were also detected and destroyed in the Kursk, Yaroslavl, Belgorod, Voronezh, and Krasnodar regions, it said.
(REUTERS)