An oil refinery in Russia’s southern Rostov region caught fire after being struck by a Ukrainian drone on Wednesday evening, acting Rostov region Governor Yury Slyusar said on Telegram.
While most of the over three dozen drones and three missiles launched by Ukraine as part of the “massive” aerial attack had been downed by regional air defences, a fire broke out at the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery and blazed for several hours before being extinguished just before 7am local time on Thursday, Slyusar said.
Footage shared by Russian independent news outlet ASTRA appeared to show a major fire at the facility, with a local resident describing a “sea of explosions” as well as “bursts of automatic gunfire now and then” and “the sounds of missiles being shot down” in the area.
The Novoshakhtinsk refinery, which is located around 10km from Russia’s border with the occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine, has come under frequent Ukrainian drone attacks, with previous strikes in March and June forcing it to temporarily halt operations.
Wednesday’s strike came just hours after Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, claimed that Ukraine had struck the nearby Kamensky Chemical Plant, a facility placed under Western sanctions for what Kovalenko called its role in producing rocket fuel, including fuel for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday morning that it had downed a total of 84 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 36 over the Rostov region, 21 over the Bryansk region and others over the Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Tambov and Krasnodar regions.
