Ukraine attacked a major Russian oil refinery using British Storm Shadow missiles, Kyiv’s military said on Thursday.
Kyiv’s air force “successfully struck” the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region bordering eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said in a statement.
Why It Matters
Kyiv has frequently attacked infrastructure connected to Russian oil and energy exports to cut Kremlin off from funds used to support its war effort. Ukraine carried out a record number of attacks on oil facilities in November, striking 14 times, Bloomberg reported at the start of December, as Moscow doubled down on its own assaults on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
What To Know
Officials said the strike triggered “numerous explosions” and damage at the targeted oil refinery was still being assessed.
The Novoshakhtinsk plant is one of southern Russia’s largest producers petroleum products and supports Moscow’s armed forces, Ukraine’s military said. It is particularly important in supplying the Kremlin’s army with diesel and jet fuel, officials added.
The U.K. started sending long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine in May 2023. It’s not clear how many of the air-launched Anglo-French cruise missiles, sometimes referred to as SCALP-EG missiles, Ukraine has received from London and Paris.
The deep-strike weapon weighs in at more than 4,100 pounds and has a publicly advertised range of more than 155 miles. The U.K. greenlit Ukrainian strikes inside Russian territory last year.
Kyiv has faced varying restrictions on how it could use Western-donated weapons to launch strikes over the border into Russia. But weapons developed domestically, like its Neptune missiles or long-range drones, are not bound by any limits from Ukraine’s supporters.
Ukraine’s military said on Thursday the country had also struck the Temryuk seaport in Russia’s Krasnodar region and damaged two oil tanks at the site. Kyiv said the port supplied Russia’s military.
Ukraine attacked a military airfield in the Caucasus republic of Adygea in the same night, Kyiv added. The Ukrainian military did not say what had been damaged, but reported a target “was hit and a fire broke out.”
Russian Telegram channels separately reported explosions in the Russian city of Volgograd shortly after 11 p.m. local time on Thursday. One account with purported links to the authorities said blasts were heard in the Krasnoarmeysky area of the city. A major oil refinery operated by energy giant Lukoil is located in this part of Volgograd.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that the country had intercepted 34 Ukrainian drones over the Volgograd region overnight. Governor Andrey Bocharov said late on Thursday air defenses had “repelled a terrorist drone attack” in the region and said no casualties had been reported. There was no “damage to any facilities,” Bocharov said.
What People Are Saying
“The Ukrainian Defense Forces continue to take the necessary measures to undermine the military-economic potential of the Russian invaders and force the Russian Federation to cease armed aggression against Ukraine,” Kyiv’s military said on Thursday.
