Ukrainian UAVs have struck an oil plant in Russia’s Ryazan Region, leaving two people injured and causing a fire at the facility, officials have reported. The incident comes one day after a coordinated raid targeted refineries in Oryol and Nizhny Novgorod regions.
Four fixed-wing drones rammed into the oil plant, located some 200km away from Moscow, on Wednesday morning, a source in the Emergencies Ministry told RIA Novosti.
Ryazan governor Pavel Malkov confirmed the incident on his Telegram channel, assuring residents that the emergency services were working at the scene.
Two people were admitted to a local hospital in the wake of the attack, TASS quoted a representative of the medical facility as saying.
The SHOT media outlet published several video clips, seemingly captured by eyewitnesses, one of which appeared to depict the moment a drone hit the facility. Other footage shows black smoke billowing from the site following the attack.
Kiev has targeted oil refineries on Russian soil with the help of drones in the past several months.
The Russian military intercepted at least 25 hostile targets over seven regions on Tuesday, although at least one Ukrainian drone crashed into an oil facility in the western city of Oryol, around 350km south of Moscow.
Several other UAVs targeted a refinery on the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod, around 400km east of Moscow. The Russian Defense Ministry called the raid an attempted “terrorist attack.”
In Voronezh Region, governor Aleksandr Gusev wrote on his Telegram channel that air defense forces had downed more than 30 incoming UAVs on Wednesday. The incursion did not result in casualties on the ground, the official said. Aleksandr Bogomaz, the head of Bryansk Region, which borders Ukraine, estimated that eight drones had been intercepted over the territory. The neighboring Kursk and Belgorod regions also came under attack in the early hours of Wednesday, causing damage on the ground, but no casualties.