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Ukraine bombing campaign strikes more oil facilities in western Russia

Russian law enforcement officers patrol an area next to a residential building following a blast in Moscow. — AFP
Russian law enforcement officers patrol an area next to a residential building following a blast in Moscow. — AFP
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KYIV: Ukraine on Monday stepped up its bombing campaign of Russian energy sites with aerial attacks on two oil facilities in the west of the country, Kyiv's military said. Ukraine and Russia have both targeted the other country's energy facilities and military infrastructure in almost nightly drone or missile attacks. The strikes launched by Ukraine have escalated over recent months and says they are aimed at interrupting Russian military logistics or denting oil revenues that Moscow uses to fund its war effort.


The General Staff said in a statement that special forces and Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had hit an oil refinery in the Volgograd region and another processing plant in the nearby Astrakhan region. A source in the SBU said that the attack had been carried out with drones, adding this was the fifth such strike since the beginning of the year. "Both these strategic facilities produce large quantities of fuel for the Russian occupation army," the General Staff said in its statement, vowing further such attacks.


Regional governors in both Volgograd and Astrakhan earlier confirmed that Ukrainian drone attacks had sparked fires on oil and energy sites. The Russian defence ministry said its air defence systems had shot down or disabled 70 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, including 25 over Volgograd region and seven over Astrakhan. Russia has also been attacking Ukraine with drones and Kyiv's air force said Monday it had downed 38 Russian drones over several regions. The national grid operator meanwhile said there were electricity outages in nine regions following Russian overnight attacks on power facilities and transmission networks.


Meanwhile, a blast in a Moscow luxury residential complex on Monday seriously wounded an east Ukrainian separatist wanted by Kyiv and killed one person, state media reported, in what appeared to be another assassination attempt in the capital. Russia has been hit by a string of killings and mysterious explosions since launching its full-scale offensive in Ukraine in 2022. State media said Armen Sarkisian, a former boxing official from east Ukraine who had set up a battalion to fight against Kyiv, was among the wounded. Russian police said one person died and four others were wounded in an "incident" at the complex in north-west Moscow. The Kremlin said special services were working at the scene and declined to comment while "information was being clarified."


Russian media intially reported Sarkisian was killed in the blast but later said he survived. "Sarkisian is hospitalised in a severe condition, his leg will be amputated," the state RIA Novosti news agency quoted a law enforcement source as saying. It earlier quoted an emergency official as saying the blast was caused by an "explosive device" and that all the wounded were in a serious condition.


Ukraine's SBU security service had in December declared Sarkisian -- which it called a "crime lord from the Donetsk region" -- as a suspect for "recruiting prisoners to fight against Ukraine." In December, it said it was behind the killing of Russian army general Igor Kirillov in Moscow in its most audacious attack to date. — AFP


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