2024-05-10 18:12:15
Kyiv apparently did not heed the American call to end drone attacks on oil refineries. On the contrary. For the past three days, Russia has been facing intense drone strikes from the Black Sea coast through the vicinity of Moscow to Bashkortostan, which is 1,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Footage shows the aftermath of a drone attack on an oil refinery in the Russian city of Kaluga | Video: Reuters
On Friday morning, a swarm of drones attacked an oil refinery in Kaluga, 180 kilometers southwest of Moscow. Witnesses said there were several explosions and the refinery caught fire. The authorities did not disclose the extent of the damage, but the fires broke out in three tanks with oil and one with heating oil. The complex called Pervyj Zavod was already attacked by drones on March 15, and the refinery had to suspend operations then.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin confirmed that air defenses shot down several drones targeting the capital on the night of Thursday to Friday. A day earlier, however, a large fire broke out at an oil processing plant in Salavat in Bashkortostan, Russia. The site is 1,500 kilometers away from Ukrainian lines, making it the most remote location where Ukrainian drones have struck so far. In terms of distance, Thursday’s raid surpassed the previous record from April 2 this year, when drones attacked a refinery near Nižněkamsk. It is located 1,300 kilometers from the current front line in eastern Ukraine.
Another day earlier, Ukrainian drones hit fuel tanks in Anapa and Yurovka in southern Russia, near the Black Sea. The Reuters agency reported, citing its source from NATO, that by the end of April, the Ukrainians had managed to decommission about fifteen percent of the capacity of Russian refineries.
“Everything indicates that this is a large-scale, long-term operation targeting oil transportation points through which the Russian military supplies fuel to occupation forces in Crimea,” according to the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which monitors the conflict.
Oleh Katkov, a Ukrainian military analyst, told Kanal 24 TV that drone designers are making them precisely to cause widespread damage at fuel locations. “The warhead with explosives weighs 50 kilograms. That’s enough to put the refinery out of service, although of course not enough to completely destroy it. Our drones can bypass Russian air defenses and it turns out that their maximum range can be much greater than the originally estimated 700 up to a thousand kilometers,” explained Kotkov.
Ukrainian Minister of Digitization Mykhailo Fedorov claims that the Ukrainian-made R18 drone can fly from Kyiv to Moscow and back.
The Ukrainians are succeeding to some extent in forcing the Russians to spend on defense against drone attacks. According to the Russian website Agency, since the beginning of last year, state enterprises have spent a billion rubles, or roughly 260 million crowns, on defense against attacks. For example, the nuclear power plant in Smolensk uses the system, which is supposed to protect against drone attacks. The airport in Vladivostok, located in the Russian Far East, already has a similar system. Drones are one of the few types of weapons in which Ukraine can keep up with Russia in terms of their numbers.
Video: The Russians don’t have just one goal, says Smetana (May 10, 2024)
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