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Ukraine hits three Russian oil refineries and sinks sanctioned ship
Ukrainian drones struck three oil refineries in Russia's Bashkortostan region and sank a sanctioned container ship in the Black Sea, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant again lost external power, while residents in occupied Crimea faced queues for hot meals.
By Charlotte Redford · 3 min read
Ukrainian drones struck three oil refineries in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan and sank a sanctioned container ship in the Black Sea on Saturday, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as Kyiv steps up attacks on infrastructure that supports Moscow's war effort.
Zelenskyy said the refineries, which «process millions of tonnes of oil each year», are located nearly 1,600 kilometres from Ukraine, illustrating the range of Kyiv's drone campaign. The Russian online news outlet Astra reported that a Ukrainian drone had set fire to an oil refinery in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan. The strikes are part of a broader effort to disrupt Russian fuel supplies and logistics, officials in Kyiv have said.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy also said a Russian container ship, the Yanina, had sunk in the Black Sea after being struck by Ukrainian drones. He listed the vessel among «facilities that sustain the war effort». Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear energy company, whose shipping subsidiary FESCO operates the ship, contested the description, claiming the Yanina was carrying «civilian goods» such as frozen food and construction materials.
The military activity came as the International Atomic Energy Agency said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is illegally occupied by Russian forces, lost off-site power for nearly two hours. The agency said it was the 23rd time the plant had experienced such an outage since the start of the full-scale invasion. Although the plant is not generating electricity, it relies on external power for the cooling systems that keep its nuclear materials safe.
At the same time, Ukraine's campaign to cut off the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula from the Russian mainland has caused severe disruption for residents. Reuters reported that people in the town of Massandra have been queueing in the streets for hot meals because of power cuts. Workers were seen cooking buckwheat in huge pots, with reheated tinned beef served alongside.
Oksana Madyud, head of the Massandra town administration, said her staff were providing roughly 200 meals a day. «As under the current circumstances not everyone has the means to cook hot food on electric hobs», she said, standing beside boiling vats of buckwheat.
Ukraine has described the strategy as «bringing the war back home to Russia», striking both deep inside the country and in territory that Moscow controls and has sought to resettle with Russian immigrants. The attacks on oil refineries and shipping are intended to reduce the revenue and fuel supplies available to the Russian military.
The events unfolded on day 1,621 of the war, underscoring the sustained nature of both the fighting and the economic warfare waged by Kyiv against Russian infrastructure.
