Kyiv says struck Russian pipeline and oil depot

KYIV: Ukrainian drones on Sunday struck an oil depot in southern Russia and a pumping station hundreds of kilometres from the front, Kyiv said, with Russian officials confirming strikes in the areas. Kyiv has stepped up strikes on Moscow's infrastructure in the fifth year of war, hitting targets as far as the Urals in recent weeks. Its army said drones hit a 'dispatch station of a major oil pipeline' in Russia's Kirov region and an oil depot in the Rostov region, near occupied Ukraine. It said the pipeline transported oil from Siberia to western Russia and Belarus.
The governor of the Kirov region, Alexander Sokolov, only said that Ukrainian drones had hit a 'facility' and caused a fire, claiming no casualties and calling for calm. In the town of Matveyev-Kurgan in the southern Rostov region, regularly hit by Kyiv, local officials introduced a state of emergency over a huge blaze at an oil depot hit by a drone. The town's head Dina Alborova said the fire spread over 3,600 square meters, publishing images of plumes of black smoke. She said residential houses and several shops were affected.
In Ukraine, authorities were clearing the aftermath of a Russian strike on a warehouse in Dnipro, belonging to popular postal company Nova Poshta. Nova Poshta, a private courier company widely used in and outside Ukraine, said its Dnipro branch was hit by a drone and that 'the building burned down completely'. It added that no employees were injured. 'All these attacks must be stopped,' President Volodymyr Zelensky said online, posting images of the blaze. 'All that's needed is sufficient support for our defence and continued pressure on Russia,' he said. Earlier this week, Zelensky urged the United States to provide more ammunition for its Patriot air defence systems to counter Russian strikes. Talks to end more than four years of war between Russia and Ukraine have been deadlocked, sidelined by the Iran conflict.
Meanwhile, a drone hit the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, the UN nuclear agency has said, citing local officials. Moscow's troops captured the plant — Europe's largest — in the first days of their 2022 attack. The International Atomic Energy Agency posted on social media that the Russian-run plant's operator informed it that a drone had hit the turbine building on Saturday, 'reportedly causing a hole in its wall'.
Russian media carried a statement from state-owned nuclear power firm Rosatom accusing Ukraine of a deliberate attack -- a claim strongly denied by Kyiv. The plant lies close to the frontline in southern Ukraine. Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of risking a nuclear catastrophe with attacks. 'There should be no attack of any kind from or against the plant', IAEA chief Rafael Grossi was quoted as saying in the agency's X post late on Saturday. 'Attacking nuclear sites is like playing with fire.'
Rosatom alleged the drone was controlled via a fibre-optic cable, which ruled out 'the possibility of an accidental strike'. 'Today, we have come one step closer to an incident that is highly likely to affect even those who live far beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine,' Rosatom CEO Alexei Likachev told Russian media. Rejecting the accusations, Ukraine's foreign ministry said in a statement that they lacked 'logic'. 'It is unclear why Ukraine would strike its own nuclear power plant located on its own territory, which it itself seeks to regain under its sovereign control,' the ministry said. 'We consider these statements as yet another information operation by the occupying state.' The strike blew a hole in the wall of the machine room but did not damage core equipment, Rosatom said.
The Russian-installed management of the plant later said that Kyiv had targeted the plant's transport hub on Sunday, where vehicles transporting employees are stored. Six buses and two mini buses were 'destroyed' as a result of the drone attack, it said on social media, adding that no staff members were hurt and that the plant was operating normally. Authorities in Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia in April accused Ukraine of carrying out a strike which they said killed a transport worker.