Credit: X/Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Ukrainian drones struck a Russian fuel depot, oil pumping station and a refinery in an escalating campaign of strikes against energy infrastructure often hundreds of miles inside Russia.
Kyiv said on Sunday it had struck the Lazarevo pumping station in the Kirov region, north-east of Moscow and about 800 miles ⁠from Ukrainian-held territory.
Alexander Sokolov, the regional governor, admitted that drones had hit a “facility” and caused a fire. He claimed there had been no casualties as he called for calm. The station pumps oil from Siberia to Belarus.
Ukraine’s General Staff also said it had hit the Saratov oil refinery on the Volga River, causing a large fire during overnight strikes.
“During the night, our soldiers applied Ukraine’s long-range sanctions against an oil refinery in Saratov, Russia. This is about 700km (430 miles) from the front line,” Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said.
Roman Busargin, the Saratov regional governor, ​said on Telegram that “civil infrastructure” had been damaged in the strike, but gave no more details.
In the town of Matveyev-Kurgan in the southern Rostov region, regularly hit by Kyiv, officials introduced a state of emergency when the oil depot was hit by a drone and burst into flames.
Dina Alborova, the town’s leader, said the blaze had spread across more than 4,000 sq yards, publishing images of black smoke and reporting damage to homes and shops.
In Ukraine, authorities were clearing the aftermath of a Russian strike on a private delivery company’s warehouse in Dnipro.
A spokesman for Nova Poshta said no employees were injured after “the building burned down completely”.
“All these attacks must be stopped,” Mr Zelensky said on social media as he shared images of the blaze. “All that’s needed is sufficient support for our defence and continued pressure on Russia.”
Volodymyr Zelensky has called for continued financial support for the defence of Ukraine in order to pile pressure on Russia – Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty
Ukraine claimed Russia launched 229 drones overnight with 212 of them being intercepted. Moscow said it had brought down 216 Ukrainian drones.
Russia accused Kyiv of hitting a garage at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in occupied Ukrainian ​territory on Sunday.
Ukraine denied the allegation, which followed a separate accusation of a strike on the plant on Saturday, which was also denied.
The United Nations’ nuclear energy watchdog, which has inspectors at the Russian-occupied plant, said on Sunday that its team observed damage to a turbine building caused by drones on Saturday, but did not specify whose drones were responsible.
It said radiation levels at the ​site remained normal.
Earlier this week, Mr Zelensky urged the United States to provide more ammunition for its Patriot air defence systems to counter Russian strikes.
A teenage boy and a woman were injured when a stray drone struck an apartment building in Galati, Romania – AFP/Getty
Meanwhile, further analysis of a drone that crashed into an apartment building after straying into Romanian airspace has found it most likely launched by Moscow.
“The drone that crashed Thursday night in Galati is a Geran-2, of Russian origin,” said Nicusor Dan, the Romanian president.
“This is the unequivocal conclusion of the technical report finalised by experts of the Romanian state.”
A 14-year-old boy and a 53-year-old woman were admitted to hospital on Friday after the drone hit the block of flats close to the border with Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said that “no one” could determine the aircraft’s origin with any authority until a thorough examination was carried out.