KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine on Sunday launched a wave of strikes against Russia’s oil export infrastructure, hitting a key loading port on the Baltic Sea and two tankers that Ukraine alleges were illegally used to transport Russian crude.
A nighttime drone strike sparked a blaze at Russia’s largest oil exporting port on the Baltic Sea, according to Russian regional Gov. Alexander Drozdenko.
The port of Primorsk, operated by Russia’s state oil firm Transneft, is capable of handling hundreds of thousands of barrels per day. The port, which was targeted multiple times in March, lies over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Ukraine, between the Russian-Finnish border and Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg.
Local Gov. Drozdenko said that the drone strike did not cause an oil spill, but gave no immediate further comment regarding casualties or damage.
Ukraine did not immediately comment on the attack on Primorsk.
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had hit two Russian tankers near the entrance of the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
“These tankers were actively used to transport oil. Now they won’t,” he said. He said the operation was led by the chief of Ukraine’s general staff, Andrii Hnatov.
Zelenskyy alleged that the tankers belonged to Russia’s so-called shadow oil fleet, used to evade Western sanctions and price caps on Russian energy exports. Moscow did not immediately acknowledge his claims.
Kyiv has recently stepped up its attacks on Russia’s oil export infrastructure. Ukrainian officials argue that oil revenue directly funds Moscow’s full-scale invasion of the country, now in its fifth year.
Elsewhere, two people were killed and three others wounded as Russian drones struck Ukraine’s southern Odesa region overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s Emergency Service reported. It said the attack damaged three residential buildings.
The drones also hit port infrastructure, causing a fire that was later extinguished by emergency teams, the emergency service reported.
Nighttime Russian strikes also wounded six people in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine, the agency said. A passenger bus transporting 40 children was damaged, but no one inside was injured, it added.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike west of Moscow killed a 77-year-old man, local Gov. Andrei Vorobyov reported on the Telegram messenger app. He said the fatal attack occurred near the town of Volokolamsk, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) from central Moscow.
Vorobyov added that six drones were shot down in the Moscow region, which surrounds but does not include the Russian capital. At least five more drones were downed on the approach to Moscow itself, according to mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Sunday that a total of 334 Ukrainian UAVs were downed overnight over Russia and occupied Crimea.
Also overnight into Sunday, Russia attacked Ukraine with 269 drones and ballistic missiles, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian forces shot down and repelled 249 drones, while hits from ballistic missiles and 19 drones were recorded in 15 locations, the air force said in a Facebook update.
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