MOSCOW (Reuters) -Ukraine targeted Russian energy infrastructure with drones, disrupting air traffic across the country and sending several drones towards Moscow for the third straight night, Russian authorities said on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on the Telegram messaging app that its forces had struck Russia’s Mariysky refinery in the Mari El region, another in the village of Novospasskoye in the Ulyanovsk region, and a gas plant in the town of Budyonnovsk in the southern Stavropol region.
Russian air defence units destroyed a total of 100 Ukrainian drones overnight, including six over the Moscow region, and the rest over 11 regions and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, the Russian defence ministry said on Telegram.
UKRAINE SEEKING TO DISRUPT RUSSIAN ECONOMY
Kyiv has kept up long-range drone strikes on Moscow and other Russian regions in recent months, saying the aim is to hit energy, military and industrial assets, sap Russia’s war economy and show Russians the conflict is no longer distant.
A storage container containing fuel and lubricants in the city of Simferopol in Russian-annexed Crimea was hit by a Ukrainian drone and caught fire, the Moscow-installed governor said on Telegram.
There were no casualties and emergency services were working at the scene, the governor, Sergei Aksyonov, wrote on Telegram.
Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsiya said three of Moscow’s four airports, and several others around the country, were closed at some point in the night for safety reasons.
In the Republic of Mari El, in the eastern part of European Russia and about 800 kilometres (497 miles) from Moscow, strikes were recorded near an industrial facility, regional authorities said, adding there was no destruction.
South of Mari El, in the Ulyanovsk region, a short-lived fire broke out at a site of destroyed drones, the region’s governor, Alexei Russkikh, said on Telegram.
Ukraine also launched several drones targeting the Budyonnovsk industrial zone in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, its governor, Vladimir Vladimirov, said on Telegram. The Russian defence ministry said its units downed two drones over the region.
The attack caused no “significant” damage, and there were no casualties, Vladimirov said.
According to Ukrainian media, including the RBK-Ukraine media outlet, Kyiv attacked the Stavrolen chemical plant in the Budyonnovsk zone, a part of Russia’s Lukoil group.
Stavrolen is one of Russia’s main producers of polyethylene and polypropylene, Russian and Ukrainian media have said.
Over the previous two nights, Russia’s units destroyed 35 Ukrainian drones over the Moscow region, the Russian defence ministry said. There was no damage reported.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Reuters reporters in Moscow and Kyiv;Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Gareth Jones )
