Representative image (Ukrainian drones hit Russia)
A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and injured nine others in the Oryol region in southwestern Russia, Russian officials said on Sunday, while a separate strike targeted an oil facility deep in Russian territory, as Kiev intensifies its attacks on military and energy infrastructure.Oryol Governor Andrei Klychkov said a Ukrainian drone struck an apartment building overnight in the regional capital Oryol, killing one person and wounding nine others.In a separate attack, authorities in Russia’s Yaroslavl region, about 700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, reported that fuel storage facilities caught fire after they were struck by a drone, the Associated Press reported.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the strike, saying Ukrainian forces “bombed an important oil facility of the aggressor state’s reserves” in the Yaroslavl region.Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure in recent months, arguing that energy revenues help fund Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.Meanwhile, Britain announced it had seized a sanctioned oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” a network of ships used to transport oil in violation of international sanctions imposed over the Ukraine war.
British armed forces boarded the tanker Smertos and detained it in the English Channel on Sunday in what the British Ministry of Defense described as “the first UK-led operation of its kind.”Russia is believed to be operating hundreds of ships through its shadow fleet to bypass Western restrictions on its oil exports.British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the operation aims to increase pressure on Moscow. “This operation deals another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide,” Starmer said.These developments come as Ukraine and its Western allies continue their efforts to disrupt Russian energy revenues and military supply chains more than four years after the start of the war.
