Ukraine’s military said Saturday it had struck oil facilities inside Russia, including a major refinery, a military airfield for drones and an electronics factory.
In a statement on Telegram, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said they had hit the oil refinery in Ryazan, about 180 kilometres southeast of Moscow, causing a fire on its premises.
Also hit, the USF said, was the Annanefteprodukt oil storage facility in the Voronezh region that borders on northeastern Ukraine.
The statement did not specify how the facilities were hit, but the USF specializes in drone warfare, including long-range strikes.
There was no immediate comment from Russia on the reported attacks on its infrastructure sites, but the Defence Ministry said air defences intercepted or destroyed 112 drones across eight Russian regions and the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.
A drone attack on the Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, killed one person, said the acting governor, Yuri Slyusar.
Further from the front line, a woman was killed and two other people wounded in a drone strike on business premises in the Penza region, according to regional governor Oleg Melnichenko. In the Samara region, falling drone debris sparked a fire that killed an elderly resident, regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said in its daily report Saturday that its defence units had downed a total of 338 Ukrainian drones overnight. Its reports did not say how many Ukrainian drones were launched at any given time. Ukraine’s air force said it had downed 45 of 53 Russian drones launched at its territory overnight.
Dozens of Russian drones launched, Ukraine says
According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched 53 drones and decoys at Ukraine overnight into Saturday. It said air defences shot down or jammed 45 drones.
Eleven people were wounded in an overnight drone strike on the Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Saturday.
Rescuers rushed to the scene of a deadly Russian attack on Thursday after a volley of drones and missiles hit an apartment block.
The reciprocal drone strikes followed a day of mourning in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Friday, after a Russian drone and missile attack killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said its drones had hit Russia’s Primorsko-Akhtarsk military airfield, which has been used to launch waves of long-range drones at targets in Ukraine.
The SBU said it also hit a factory in Penza that it said supplies Russia’s military-industrial complex with electronics.
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine had no response to Moscow’s vast long-range strike capacity but it has since built up a fleet of long-range kamikaze drones able to carry explosive warheads for many hundreds of kilometres.
On Ukraine’s eastern battlefront, Russia’s Defence Ministry said, Russian forces had captured the village of Oleksandro-Kalynove in the Donetsk region on Saturday.
Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield report.
Continuing attacks come despite comments Monday from U.S. President Donald Trump about giving Russian President Vladimir Putin until Aug. 8, a shorter deadline than the 50 days Trump initially cited, to make peace with Ukraine.
Trump said Thursday that special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Russia to push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire, and has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made.
Russian forces reportedly now control almost 20 per cent of Ukraine in its east and south 3½ years into the war.
