An oil refinery in Russia’s southern Volgograd region caught fire after an overnight Ukrainian drone attack, but the blaze has now been put out, the regional governor said yesterday.
Andrei Bocharov, the governor, said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that Russian air defences 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 hospitalised,” he said.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, said on Telegram that the Volgograd oil refinery, which he described as one of Russia’s largest, had been struck.
SHOT, a Russian news outlet 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 it claimed to have struck and set on fire a Lukoil refinery, Russia’s fourth largest, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow.
Sources at Lukoil denied that the NORSI refinery was hit, and said production was not affected. Petrochemical company Sibur said there had been a drone strike and fire at its nearby plant.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said yesterday that special operations forces have not seen North Korean troops on the battlefield in Russia’s Kursk region for around three weeks, suggesting they have been forced to withdraw after taking heavy losses.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that some 11,000 troops from Russia’s ally North Korea have been deployed in Kursk to support Moscow’s forces. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
“The special operations forces speak exclusively for the areas where our units are deployed, in this regard, we inform you that the presence of North Korean troops has not been noted for approximately three weeks,” said Colonel Oleksandr Kindratenko.
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