Drones target fuel supplies to Russian military



Russian authorities reported two new night-time attacks against oil refineries that are seen as key regional suppliers of fuel to planes and vehicles conducting the war in Ukraine.

Based on surveillance videocam footage published on Russian social networks, the first attack occurred at 3am local time on Wednesday at the Afipsky refinery in the Krasnodar region in the south of the country.

According to information released by the local department of the Minister of Emergency Situations, the attack caused a fire at a fuel oil processing unit.

The second attack came half an hour later at Krasnodar’s Ilsky refinery. However, the drone was reported to have missed any critical facilities as its charge exploded.

The privately held Ilsky refinery was previously attacked by drones on 28 May. No serious structural damage to its processing units was reported.

Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev posted a message on his social network channel about an hour-and-a-half after the first attack, saying the Afipsky fire had been extinguished.

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Firefighters arrived at the site minutes after the attack, as the refinery contains a firefighting unit.

The authorities reported no casualties at the two installations.

The refineries are about 20 kilometres from each other and to the south of the regional capital, Krasnodar.

Ukraine has traditionally denied that it has anything to do with drone attacks inside Russia.

Its officials have repeatedly said Western-supplied arms will not be used inside Russia and will be employed to liberate territories captured by Moscow since the annexation of the Crimea Peninsula in 2014.

Russian independent news outlet Meduza has quoted military experts in Russia who asked not to be named because of personal safety concerns as saying that presumed Ukrainian drones attacking oil installations and a Moscow suburb look like “a handmade, rather than industrial job” and employ “improvisations” to attach explosive charges from the mining industry to civilian drones.

At the end of last week, Russian authorities reported night-time drone attacks on two pumping stations serving the Druzhba oil export pipeline running across Belarus and Ukraine to countries in Eastern Europe.

The first attack occurred in the Pskov region. The second was in the Tver region.

Russian state oil pipeline operator Transneft did not reveal any damage from the attacks.