By Deborah Nnamdi
Russian regional governor of Volgograd, Andrei Bocharov, on Friday, said an oil refinery in the region caught fire after an overnight Ukrainian drone attack.
Bocharov, in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, said that Russian air defenses had repelled an attack on his region by eight drones.
“As a result of falling debris from one of the drones, a fire broke out on the territory of an oil refinery, which was promptly extinguished. One injured refinery worker was hospitalized,” he said.
Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, said on Telegram that the Volgograd oil refinery, which he described as one of Russia’s largest, had been struck.
A Russian news outlet, SHOT, with contacts in the security services, said four Ukrainian drones had been destroyed over a second refinery in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow.
Ukraine has carried out frequent air attacks on Russian refineries, oil depots, and industrial sites in an attempt to cripple key infrastructure underpinning Russia’s war effort.
This week Ukraine said it has struck and set on fire a Lukoil refinery, Russia’s fourth largest, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow.
However, sources at Lukoil denied that the NORSI refinery was hit, saying that production was not affected.
Petrochemical company Sibur said there had been a drone strike and fire at its nearby plant.
Russia is currently feeding more crude oil through its refineries in the hope of boosting fuel exports after new U.S. sanctions on Russian tankers and traders made exports of unprocessed crude more difficult, sources told Reuters this week.
Recall that a Ukrainian drone attack last week forced a refinery in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, to suspend operations.
Russia’s Defence Ministry, in a statement on Friday, said that 49 Ukrainian drones had been downed over the country overnight, including 25 in the southern Rostov region and eight in the Volgograd region.
“Drones had also been detected and destroyed in the Kursk, Yaroslavl, Belgorod, Voronezh, and Krasnodar regions,” the Defence Ministry said.
