Fresh Ukrainian drone strike causes fires at Russian oil and gas facilities

Fires broke out at major oil and gas facilities as Ukraine launched a barrage of drones at energy infrastructure in southern Russia overnight, regional authorities said on Monday morning.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that it had downed 70 Ukrainian drones launched at the south of the country through the night, including 27 over the Rostov region, 25 over the Volgograd region, and others over the Astrakhan, Voronezh, Belgorod and Kursk regions.

Volgograd Governor Andrey Bocharov said that air defences had repelled a “massive” drone strike on the region, but that falling drone debris had caused “localised fires at an oil refinery, which were promptly contained”.

Pro-Kremlin Telegram channel SHOT reported that Volgograd residents heard at least 50 explosions overnight as Ukrainian forces targeted a Lukoil refinery on the outskirts of the city. A fire had already broken out at the facility, which is one of Russia’s largest oil refineries, following a separate drone strike on Friday,

In the neighbouring Astrakhan region on the Caspian Sea, Governor Igor Babushkin said that Ukrainian drones had attacked a local “fuel and energy complex”, with a fire breaking out after one of the drones was downed by air defences.

Independent news channel ASTRA posted footage appearing to show a fire at a Gazprom gas processing plant in the regional capital Astrakhan.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, confirmed the strikes on the Volgograd and Astrakhan facilities, stressing that their key role in supplying fuel to what he dubbed Russia’s “army of criminals” had made them legitimate military targets, as well as the fact that Russia’s “fuel and energy sector is the primary source of funding for its defence industry”.

Flights were temporarily suspended at airports in both Volgograd and Astrakhan, as well as in the cities of Kazan, Nizhnekamsk, Saratov, Ulyanovsk, Vladikavkaz, Grozny and Makhachkala, due to the danger posed by incoming drones into Monday morning, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said.