Overnight drone operations by Ukrainian forces resulted in blazes at multiple Russian petroleum installations on Saturday, according to regional Russian authorities, marking another chapter in ongoing strikes against Moscow’s crucial energy sector.
Russian officials in the Rostov region reported that debris from downed drones ignited a blaze that harmed an oil storage facility and fuel tanker at Taganrog port, while administrators in the adjacent Krasnodar region documented a fire erupting at a petroleum depot in Armavir from similar causes. “Another facility of Russia’s oil industry has been reached — Armavir,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X Saturday of the attack in the Krasnodar region, noting that Armavir is “500 kilometers from our state border.” “We are rightfully bringing the war back to where it came from,” he wrote.
Ukrainian forces have broadened their medium and long-distance attack capabilities, utilizing drone and rocket systems developed within their borders to combat Russia’s 4-year-old invasion. Strikes against Russian petroleum infrastructure that serves as a crucial funding source for the invasion have become nearly routine events.
Meanwhile, Russia has employed its extended-range ballistic weapons to target Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure and bombard urban areas. The Ukrainian capital is preparing for additional intense bombardments following what the Russian Foreign Ministry described earlier this week as forthcoming “systemic strikes” on Kyiv. Zelenskyy said Thursday that he’s being “very persistent” in pressing the United States to provide his country with more Patriot air defense missiles that can counter devastating Russian ballistic missile attacks. The strikes on Russian petroleum infrastructure occurred one day after a Russian drone participating in an assault on Ukraine veered off course and hit an apartment complex in eastern Romania, wounding two individuals in the NATO member nation. The border violation heightened worries that the conflict might extend beyond the alliance’s boundaries and prompted widespread criticism throughout Europe.
