Ukraine drone strike kills one, hits oil facility in Russia
A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and injured nine others in Russia’s southwestern Oryol region, Russian officials said on Sunday, while a separate strike targeted an oil facility deep inside Russian territory as Kyiv intensified attacks on military and energy infrastructure.Oryol Governor Andrei Klychkov said a Ukrainian drone hit a residential building overnight in the regional capital of Oryol, killing one person and wounding nine others.In a separate attack, authorities in Russia’s Yaroslavl region, around 700 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, reported that fuel storage facilities caught fire after being struck by a drone, Associated Press reported.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the strike, saying Ukrainian forces had “struck an oil facility that was important for the reserve of the aggressor state” in the Yaroslavl region.Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure in recent months, arguing that energy revenues help finance Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.Meanwhile, Britain announced that it had detained a sanctioned oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet”, a network of vessels used to transport oil in violation of international sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war.British armed forces boarded and detained the tanker, Smyrtos, in the English Channel on Sunday in what the UK Defence Ministry described as “the first UK-led operation of its kind.”Russia is believed to be operating hundreds of vessels through the shadow fleet to bypass Western restrictions on its oil exports.British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the operation was intended to tighten pressure on Moscow. “This operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fuelling Putin’s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide,” Starmer said.The developments come as both Ukraine and its Western allies continue efforts to disrupt Russia’s energy revenues and military supply chains more than four years after the war began.
