Ukraine says it hit Russian oil facilities, military airfield

KYIV – Ukraine’s military said on Aug 2 that it had struck oil facilities inside Russia, including a major refinery as well as a military airfield for drones and an electronics factory.

In a statement on Telegram, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) said they had hit the oil refinery in Ryazan, about 180km south-east of Moscow, causing a fire on its premises.

Also hit, the USF said, was the Annanefteprodukt oil storage facility in the Voronezh region that borders north-eastern Ukraine.

The statement did not specify how the facilities were hit, but the USF specialises in drone warfare, including long-range strikes.

There was no immediate comment from Russia on the reported attacks on its infrastructure sites.

Separately, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said its drones had hit Russia’s Primorsko-Akhtarsk military airfield, which has been used to launch waves of long-range drones at targets in Ukraine.

The SBU said it also hit a factory in Penza that it said supplies Russia’s military-industrial complex with electronics.

At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine had no response to Moscow’s vast long-range strike capacity, but it has since built up a fleet of long-range kamikaze drones able to carry explosive warheads for many hundreds of kilometres.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said in its daily report that its defence units had downed a total of 338 Ukrainian drones overnight. Its reports do not say how many Ukrainian drones were launched at any given time.

For its part, Ukraine’s air force said it had downed 45 of 53 Russian drones launched towards its territory overnight.

On Ukraine’s eastern battlefront, Russia’s Defence Ministry said, Russian forces had captured the village of Oleksandro-Kalynove in the Donetsk region on Aug 2.

Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield report.

Russian forces now control almost 20 per cent of Ukraine in its east and south after 3½ years of grinding war. REUTERS