The Ukrainian military said yesterday it had struck Russia’s largest oil refinery, some 2,500km from Ukraine, deep in Siberia.
The refinery, which is in Omsk and is operated by Gazpromneft, was last attacked in July.
Ukraine’s General Staff did not provide details about the impact of the attack in its statement on social media but said the refinery was supplying fuel to the Russian army.
In the summer, the facility had to halt operations after the strike.
The Omsk region governor Vitaly Khotsenko said that an industrial zone was hit by a drone, without providing details.
Ukraine, under heavy missile and drone attack from Russia, is waging its own campaign of long-distance drone strikes against military, energy and commercial targets in a bid to raise the cost to Moscow of continuing the war.
Meanwhile, intensifying attacks by Russia and Ukraine ahead of the winter are further endangering navigational safety in the Black Sea, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said yesterday, adding that world powers must not allow the region to be turned into a new front in the war.
Nato member Turkey, which has maintained good ties with both Moscow and Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has repeatedly called on both sides to halt attacks in the Black Sea that have also struck Turkish-flagged and Turkish-owned commercial vessels.
Ankara says it is awaiting responses to a proposal it conveyed to Russia and Ukraine aimed at stopping the attacks and ensuring the safe shipment of grain from the region.
Speaking at a joint Press conference with his Hungarian counterpart Anita Orban in Ankara, Fidan said the attacks, which he described as a serious threat to the regional security, were getting worse even as Turkey had already proposed solutions.
“At the moment, both sides are engaged in tremendous attacks to establish some sort of military superiority over each other before we go into winter, and this seriously impacts navigational safety in the Black Sea,” Fidan said.
“As regional countries (and) the international community, we must never allow the Black Sea to be turned into a new front for conflict. However, unfortunately as you can see, as the war expands, it is also showing its effects in the Black Sea,” he said.
Turkey and the United Nations helped to mediate the so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2022 to allow for the safe export of Ukrainian grain amid the war, but Russia withdrew from the agreement the following year, complaining that its own food and fertiliser exports faced serious obstacles.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that Russia’s war in Ukraine is at a dangerous stalemate and the United States will keep working toward a settlement to end the conflict.
“We’d love to see a negotiated settlement to this war that is permanent, enduring, and fair. And that’s what we’re committed to continuing to do,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Portugal.
US President Donald Trump’s administration in recent weeks has sought to revive talks to end the four-year-old conflict – Europe’s bloodiest since World War Two, with Ukrainian negotiators set to visit the US for talks today and tomorrow.
Mutual drone attacks by Russia and Ukraine this year have gradually spread across the economy, hitting targets from energy facilities and refineries to ports and vessels carrying oil and grain, e-commerce warehouses and, most recently, data centres.
Rubio said escalations could spark a wider conflict.
“That escalation could wind up being a sabotage campaign in neighbouring countries that are members of Nato,” Rubio said, adding that other things ‘could quickly turn what is a war between two countries into a much broader and far more dangerous regional conflict.”
&uuid=(email))