Ukrainian drones strike major Russian refinery 800 miles from border

Ukrainian drones struck a major refinery deep inside Russia , military officials said Thursday, the fourth in three days in Kyiv’s monthslong campaign to choke Moscow’s vital oil sector.

Russia is one of the world’s biggest energy producers, with oil providing an economic mainstay as its army tries to push deeper into Ukraine in a slow and costly advance more than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion.

The attacks have dented Russia’s refining capacity, bringing shortages at gas stations. Kyiv officials say the onslaught seeks to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek a peace deal. There is no sign that strategy is working.

Ukraine’s General Staff said that its forces struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refining and petrochemical complex in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan overnight, causing a fire at the facility.

The plant processes up to 74 million barrels of oil annually, producing gasoline, diesel fuel and other products, it said.

Russia’s Bashkortostan governor, Radiy Khabirov, said only that a drone attack wounded two civilians and started a fire in an industrial zone of Salavat.

Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer whose giant warehouses have repeatedly been struck by Ukrainian drones, said a fire started at one of its facilities in the Salavat industrial zone after the overnight attack. The company said the facility was evacuated but that goods were not being stored there.

The attack came a day after Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and drones blitzed a major Russian naval base on the Black Sea coast.

Elsewhere, four explosive experts from Russia’s Emergency Ministry and a security guard were killed Thursday after an unspecified Ukrainian weapon exploded in Sevastopol, a port city in illegally annexed Crimea, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev said.

They were inspecting the site of a Ukrainian attack when “an enemy weapon detonated,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Russian refinery in Orsk that was hit by Ukrainian drones earlier this week has suspended operations, Orenburg region Gov. Yevgeny Solntsev said Thursday.

He said that “key infrastructure, which cannot be restored at this time” was struck, including foreign equipment, and “taking (international) sanctions into account,” the repairs could take up to six months, Solntsev said in a rare public admission in Russia of the problems Ukrainian attacks are causing.

Ukraine’s General Staff had reported striking the Orsk refinery, in Russia’s Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan, on Tuesday.

Russia has responded by hammering Ukraine with ballistic missiles, jet-powered drones and glide bombs, all of which are powerful and hard to intercept. The strikes have killed more than 16,000 civilians since the war began, according to the United Nations.