KYIV: Ukrainian drones hit a Russian oil refinery and an apartment block in an overnight attack just hours before US President Donald Trump hosts his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for a high-stakes summit in Alaska.
Kyiv has targeted Russia’s oil depots and refineries in long-range drone attacks in what it calls retaliatory strikes for Moscow’s nightly barrages of Ukrainian cities and its energy grid.
The Ukrainian military said Friday it hit a large oil refinery in the central Russian city of Syzran, some 800 kilometres (500 miles) behind the front line.
“The Syzran oil refinery in the Samara region of Russia, one of the largest in the Rosneft system, was hit,“ Ukraine’s general staff said, referring to the network of facilities owned by Russian state-run energy giant Rosneft.
It said the facility produced aviation fuel and supplied the Russian army.
Unverified images on social media showed multiple fires and grey smoke billowing from the site at dawn on Friday.
A separate Ukrainian drone strike on an apartment block in the Russian border region of Kursk killed one person and wounded 10 others, local Russian officials said.
“Unfortunately, a 45-year-old woman died on the spot,“ Governor Alexander Khinshtein said in a video on Telegram, standing in front of a blown-out window.
Russian attacks also continued, with Ukrainian officials in the frontline Kharkiv and Donetsk regions reporting six civilians killed in strikes over the last 24 hours.
Ukraine has previously vowed to step-up its long-range strikes against Russia as Moscow launched record numbers of missiles and drones at Ukraine in June and July.
The attack comes as Putin and Trump are to meet on Friday in Alaska with Trump pushing for an end to the Ukraine war, triggered by Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
Russia has advanced on the ground ahead of the talks and Trump has publicly mooted the idea of a territorial swap between the warring sides.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited to the Alaska summit, has ruled that out.
Russia’s army said Ukraine fired 53 drones overnight, while Ukraine’s air force said Moscow launched 97 – AFP