A Russian oil refinery in the southern Volgograd region caught fire after being hit by debris from a Ukrainian drone attack.
Regional Governor Andrei Bocharov confirmed the overnight attack, saying on Friday that the blaze was “promptly extinguished” and one injured worker was hospitalised.
The attack was Ukraine’s latest salvo in its campaign to destroy refineries, oil depots and industrial sites underpinning Russia’s war efforts.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, described the Volgograd refinery as one of the largest in Russia.
Earlier this week, Kyiv claimed to have struck and set on fire a Lukoil refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow. A drone attack last week forced a refinery in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, to suspend operations.
The attacks also partially disrupted electricity supplies in the city and damaged its hospital, administrative building, grain warehouse, a house and several trucks, he said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said its defence systems shot down 59 of 102 Russian drones overnight.
The attack came one day after Russian drones killed nine people in a strike on a residential block in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy.
After the attack, Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office, accused Russia of launching Shahed drones charged with shrapnel “to increase the number of civilian casualties”.
Trading accusations
On Friday, Russia’s Investigative Committee said it was probing the killing of 22 people between September and November in an occupied Russian village. It said the figure includes eight women who were allegedly raped before being killed.
Investigators said one of the Ukrainian soldiers allegedly responsible for the killings was arrested in the western region of Kursk, where Ukraine controls dozens of border towns since launching an offensive last year.
Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of killing civilians since the conflict began nearly three years ago, the latter claiming Moscow’s forces murdered hundreds of civilians in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv.
Moscow rejected the allegations and accused Kyiv of staging the footage, a claim denied by several independent fact-checking organisations and media outlets.