(Reuters) – Ukraine’s military, quoting media, reported a strike early on Friday on a recently closed gas pumping and measuring station in western Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been under pressure seven months after a cross-border incursion.
A Ukrainian military Telegram channel posted a picture of a fireball rising skyward with the caption: “Media are reporting a successful strike on the Sudzha gas transport system through which the enemy used to transport gas to Europe.”
There was no official word on the incident from government officials in Kyiv. Authorities in Moscow also did not report the incident.
The station at Sudzha was the only point through which Russian gas had passed on its way through Ukraine and on to Europe until Ukraine declined to prolong a transit agreement in January this year. A second crossing point was closed in 2022.
Ukrainian media also reported the strike and posted video footage of the blaze as did Telegram channels in the Kursk region.
Unofficial Russian military blogs said they believed Ukrainian forces had staged the attack. The Baza Telegram channel, close to the Russian security services, said the pipeline had been damaged.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that Ukraine had already violated a proposed ceasefire on energy sites in the three-year-old war by attacking an oil depot in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar.
Sudzha was one of the first towns to be captured by Ukrainian forces in the mass cross-border attack last August.
Ukrainian forces held large swathes of the region, but Russian forces have been taking back territory in recent weeks and Moscow’s military last week said it had recaptured Sudzha.
Russian bloggers reported that Moscow’s forces had crept for several kilometres (miles) through the pipeline as part of the operation to retake the area.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
