By Olena Harmash and Andrew Osborn
KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine said on Friday it had struck a Russian oil refinery and a microchip factory in a huge drone attack that caused fires at the refinery’s production facilities and an oil pumping station.
Russia said hours earlier that its forces had repelled an overnight drone attack, but four industry sources confirmed to Reuters that one of Russia’s oldest refineries had been struck in the city of Ryazan southeast of Moscow overnight.
The attack set ablaze oil storage at the refinery and damaged equipment including a railway loading rack and a hydrotreater unit used to remove impurities from refined products, the sources said.
Video footage posted on social media showed smoke and flames engulfing an oil refinery in Ryazan, and people apparently running for safety in panic. Reuters was able to verify the location of the video footage but not when it was shot.
If confirmed, the overnight strikes underline Ukraine’s ability to hit targets deep inside Russia as the two sides try to strengthen their positions before any peace talks get under way following Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The U.S. president has said he intends to bring a swift end to nearly three years of war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he was open to discussions with Trump on the Ukraine war, but that the question of negotiating with Ukraine was complicated by the fact that its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had signed a decree preventing him from conducting talks with Putin.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he saw no objective signs that Ukraine or the West were ready for peace talks.
“On the contrary, Western military supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces are continuing, ultimatums to Russia are being worked out, there is a (Ukrainian) legal ban on negotiations, and the issue of the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities is not being resolved,” Lavrov said in remarks published on Friday.
THIRTEEN RUSSIAN REGIONS TARGETED
The overnight drone attack appeared to be one of Kyiv’s biggest of the war.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said 20 Ukrainian drones had targeted the Ryazan region in an assault that involved a total of 121 drones and targeted 13 regions, including Moscow.
The Ukrainian military said on Facebook that fires had broken out at the damaged refinery’s production facilities and at an oil pumping station but did not make clear how serious the damage was.
Ukraine’s military said it had also struck the Kremniy El microelectronics plant in Russia’s Bryansk region, which Kyiv said produced components for Russian air defence missile systems, nuclear-capable missiles, and on-board electronics for combat aircraft.
Russia’s state TASS news agency cited a statement from the Kremniy plant as saying work at the factory had been suspended after a drone attack and that nobody had been hurt.
The plant suffered damage to some of its production facilities and to a warehouse, and its power supply had been disrupted, TASS cited the statement as saying.
Pavel Malkov, the Ryazan regional governor, said on Telegram that emergency services were tackling the aftermath.
Russia’s Defence Ministry made no mention of casualties or damage but said six drones had been destroyed over the Moscow region and one over the capital itself.
It said drones had also been destroyed over the border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. The Saratov, Rostov, Voronezh, Tula, Oryol, Lipetsk and the Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops hold a chunk of land despite Russian efforts to eject them, were also targeted.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said early on Friday that air defences had intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations around the Russian capital. There was no word of any major damage or casualties.
(Reporting by Reuters Moscow Buro and Ronald Popeski; Additional reporting by Olena Harmash in Kyiv Writing by Andrew Osborn in London and Ronald Popeski, Editing by Jamie Freed, Diane Craft, Gerry Doyle, Gareth Jones and Timothy Heritage)
