Ukraine ‘destroys major fuel pipeline near Moscow’ | World | News
Ukrainian military intelligence said Ukrainian forces hit an important fuel pipeline in the Moscow region that supplies the Russian army. According to the statement made on the Telegram messaging channel, the operation was carried out late on Friday.
The institution, known by its acronym HUR, described the incident as a “serious blow” to Russia’s military logistics. HUR said its forces struck the Koltsevoy pipeline, which is 250 miles long and supplies the Russian military with gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from refineries in Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow.
HUR said that three fuel lines were also destroyed in the operation targeting infrastructure near the Ramensky district. HUR said the pipeline has the capacity to transport up to three million tonnes of jet fuel, 2.8 million tonnes of diesel and 1.6 million tonnes of gasoline annually.
“Our attacks have been more effective than the sanctions,” said HUR president Kyrylo Budanov, referring to international sanctions imposed on Russia for its all-out war and invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, the Russian defense ministry claimed that its forces defeated a team of Ukrainian special forces sent to Pokrovsk, a hotspot on the eastern front line, in an attempt to prevent Russian troops from advancing further into the city.
He later released videos showing two men he said were Ukrainian soldiers surrendering in the embattled city. In the videos, the men, one wearing fatigues and the other wearing a dark green jacket, are seen sitting in front of a crumbling wall in a dark room and talking about fierce fighting and their encirclement by Russian forces. The authenticity of the videos could not be independently verified, and there was no public statement from Kiev regarding the Russian ministry’s claims.
Russia and Ukraine offered conflicting accounts of what was happening in Pokrovsk, a major Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern Donetsk region. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed last week that his forces had surrounded the city’s Ukrainian defenders.
But Ukrainian chief of staff Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Saturday that the situation in Pokrovsk remained “the most difficult” for Ukrainian forces trying to push Russian troops out of the city, but that there was no encirclement or blockade as Moscow claimed.
“A comprehensive operation is underway to destroy enemy forces and remove them from Pokrovsk. The main burden lies on the shoulders of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, primarily UAV operators and assault units,” Mr. Syrskyi said in a statement on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that some Russian troops had infiltrated the city but insisted that Ukraine was weeding them out.
Mr. Zelensky said Russia had deployed about 170,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Pokrovsk is located, in a major push to capture the city and achieve a major war victory.
Mr. Putin is trying to convince the United States, which has asked him for a peace deal, that Ukraine cannot survive in the face of Russia’s military superiority. He also emphasized that Russia’s nuclear capabilities were increasing, while refusing to compromise on his country’s legitimate war aims.
One of Moscow’s main goals was to capture the entire Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial center, consisting of the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Kyiv still controls about a 10th of the coal-rich region.
One civilian was killed and 15 people were injured when Russia hit southern Ukraine with a ballistic missile on Saturday morning, local official Vitaliy Kim said. A child is among those injured in the strike on the Mykolaiv region, he said and added that Russia used an Iskander missile.
Another Russian attack early Saturday sparked a fire at a gas plant in the central Poltava region, Ukraine’s emergency service reported. The latest attacks come as Russia continues major drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure; These attacks led to power outages and restrictions across Ukraine earlier this week in what Kiev described as “systematic energy terrorism.”
By Saturday, Moscow had launched 223 drones into Ukraine, of which 206 were shot down, according to the Ukrainian air force. 17 of them hit targets in seven regions of Ukraine, the air force said, without providing details. Russia also hit an agricultural enterprise in the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine, wounding a 66-year-old woman, according to a Telegram update by regional government official Viacheslav Chaus.
Russian forces shot down or intercepted 98 Ukrainian drones flying over the country overnight, six of which were approaching Moscow, the Russian defense ministry said on Saturday. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
