MOSCOW (Reuters) – Ukraine struck a southern Russian port on the Sea of Azov with missiles on Tuesday night and started a fire at an oil depot using drones in the Bryansk region, Russian authorities and various media said.
The extent of the damage and the weapons used in the attack were not specified, although Russia has repeatedly warned that Ukraine’s use of US ATACMS missiles on the border represented direct involvement of the West and risked triggering a wider war.
Kyiv claimed to strike Russian energy facilities in retaliation for attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure, which affected available production capacity in the country and caused power outages.
The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses destroyed 14 Ukrainian drones overnight over the Ukrainian border city of Bryansk.
The region’s governor, Alexandre Bogomaz, said on Telegram that an unspecified production facility briefly caught fire.
The Ukrainian military meanwhile said it had caused a massive fire at an oil depot, while independent Russian media outlet ASTRA reported that a refinery had been hit.
A Ukrainian industry source said the nighttime attack on a Bryansk depot did not affect oil transit to Europe via Ukraine.
Ukrainian missiles also hit the port of Taganrog, a Russian city near the Ukrainian border, damaging an industrial facility and 14 cars, the region’s acting governor, Yuri Slyusar, said.
Reuters was unable to independently verify this information.
The damaged area of the Taganrog port was cordoned off by police, the city’s mayor, Svetlana Kambulova, said on Telegram.
The attack partially damaged the heating systems of 27 apartment buildings, she said.
Russia has an air base near Taganrog, from which the air force launches its drones and attacks on Ukraine, according to military analysts.
(Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow, Maria Gordeyeva in Almaty and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; written by Guy Faulconbridge; French version Etienne Breban; edited by Augustin Turpin)
