Ukrainian strikes knock out power in Russia-held Crimea
Ukrainian drones knocking out electricity in Russian-held Crimea’s largest city and targeting facilities in central and southern Russia underscore the scale of their attacks on Kiev’s energy infrastructure.
Ukraine has intensified attacks on Russian oil refineries, warehouses and supply routes, causing oil prices to soar in Russia, where authorities have limited sales in some regions.
Fuel shortages have reached particularly severe levels on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia captured and annexed in 2014.
The Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol forced the early closure of public transport and cafes and said street lights would be dimmed to protect the city during night attacks.
The latest wave has disrupted electricity supplies, trolleybuses will not run and parents should keep their children at home, he said on Wednesday.
Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that work to restore supplies was continuing despite Kiev “trying to deprive us of our normal living conditions and create panic.”
Ukraine’s drone commander, Robert Brovdi, said the drones hit the main substation of the Sevastopol power plant in Crimea, which is not recognized as Russian by most countries and which Kiev has said it will never give up.
Gleb Nikitin, governor of central Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, said debris from a crashed Ukrainian drone damaged an industrial facility and killed two people.
He said the unspecified facility did not suffer serious damage.
The region is home to NORSI, Russia’s fourth-largest oil refinery, one of many major oil facilities in central Russia that temporarily halted or reduced production in May following drone attacks, Reuters reported.
Russia’s defense ministry said its air defenses shot down 323 drones overnight in areas across the country.
Officials in Russia’s Orenburg region, 1,000 km southeast of Moscow, said their unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down on an industrial facility.
It was not immediately clear if there was any damage in the remote area, which borders Kazakhstan and is home to several industrial facilities including a gas processing plant and oil refinery.
The Kazakh Ministry of Energy said that oil was supplied through alternative routes.
Ukraine has said its strategy of targeting Russian energy facilities with long-range drones aims to deplete a key source of Russia’s war funds and show the Russians that the four-year conflict initiated by Moscow is no longer distant.
President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev on Tuesday of trying to destabilize Russian society and said the Russian government would implement additional measures to offset the consequences of the attacks.
Both sides say they do not target civilians, but while thousands of civilians lost their lives in Russia’s attacks in Ukraine, there were also deaths in Russia.
Local authorities said a man was killed and a woman injured in a drone attack in the Belgorod region on the Russian border, while one person was killed in Russian bombardment in the eastern Ukrainian city of Balakliia on Wednesday.
