A daytime drone strike crippled the Tyumen oil refinery in Siberia on Saturday in what could be Kyiv’s deepest raid into Russian territory yet, as it accelerates devastating long-range attacks on the Kremlin’s critical energy infrastructure.
Local residents heard at least two loud explosions mid-day, as staff were evacuated from the plant and more than 10 fire trucks rushed over, according to the Moscow Times’ Telegram channel.
A thick plume of black smoke could be seen emanating from the refinery as fire raged at the largest oil processing facility in Western Siberia — about 1,550 miles from the Ukrainian border.
“Deeper further. There will be no safe regions in Russia,” Serhii Sternenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s defense minister, wrote on X Saturday. “Ukraine will bury the Russian colony.”
Tyumen , one of Russia’s most important oil producing regions, is home to one of the country’s most modern oil refineries. It produces 44 million barrels of crude a year — with a maximal daily output of up to 160,000 barrels a day. It also cranks out millions of barrels of diesel and gasoline annually.
Ukraine’s forces also targeted oil and gas sites in occupied Crimea overnight, as it aims to turn the peninsula “into an island,” Defense Minister Myhailo Fedorov said earlier this week.
The strikes come just two days after Kyiv’s drone attack on the Russian capital forced the Moscow Oil Refinery to shut down operations indefinitely, Ukraine’s military confirmed Friday. It disrupted commercial flights across Moscow overnight Thursday in one of its biggest attacks in more than four years of war.
Ukraine struck a Russian oil refinery and disrupted commercial flights across Moscow overnight Thursday in one of its biggest attacks in more than four years of war.
That facility is one of the largest in the Russia, supplying about 40% of the Moscow fuel market, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Meanwhile, Russian forces killed three Ukrainians and injured 45 other civilians across the country over the past day, including a six-year-old child in a strike on an apartment building in Kharkiv.
Graphic footage showed first responders pulling bodies from a destroyed apartment block in Ukraine’s second-largest city, with one person taken in a body bag and survivors’ faces covered in soot as they were pulled away from the debris on stretchers.
“Sadly, during search and rescue operations, the body of a person who was killed was found under the rubble of the destroyed building,” Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram.
Talks between the two warring countries have stalled, as European leaders are split whether the bloc should engage directly with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to mediate the talks to end the deadliest conflict since WWII, Politico reported.
Questions have swirled in recent months whether Europe should step in, after US-brokered peace talks took a back seat to the war in Iran. French President Emmanuel Macron said “Europeans are not mediators,” a position shared by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
With Post Wires
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