Ukrainian drones hit an oil refinery 250 miles east of Moscow in a huge wave of attacks on Russian power plants, say military sources.
A large fire exploded at the refinery in Kstovo city in the Nizhny Novgorod region following the attack, the Ukrainian military said, adding it was assessing the scale of damage there.
Russian petrochemicals giant Sibur said on Wednesday it had temporarily suspended production at the plant due to a Ukrainian drone attack.
The company said debris had fallen onto the plant and caused a fire but there were no casualties. Emergency services were working at the site.
Russian officials and media outlets also claimed that a nuclear power plant was among the targets of the massive Ukrainian drone attack against oil and power facilities.
Air defence systems destroyed a drone attempting to strike a nuclear power facility in the western region of Smolensk bordering Belarus, Governor Vasily Anokhin said.
This could not be independently verified and Russia and Ukraine have made a series of claims throughout the war claiming attacks on nuclear facilities.
The Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant, the largest power generating plant in Russia’s northwest, was working normally, RIA state news agency reported.
The Russian defence ministry said 104 drones were involved in raids across western Russia, 11 of which were destroyed over the Smolensk region.
In total, Russian air defences reportedly destroyed drones over nine regions, nearly half of them over Kursk where Russian and North Korean troops are fighting to drive out Ukrainian forces that seized a swathe of this region in a surprise raid last summer.
Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia temporarily halted flights at the Kazan airport in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan and at the Pulkovo airport in the Leningrad region.
Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia, some at targets more than 900 miles away, aim to destroy infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts.
The Ukrainian military said Russia launched an Iskander-M ballistic missile and 57 drones in an overnight attack.
The military said it shot down 29 Russian drones and that 14 drones did not reach their targets.
Debris from a destroyed Russian drone fell near a metro station in the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, said on Wednesday.
Kyiv was under air raid alert for about half an hour starting at 0355 GMT, according to data from Ukraine’s air force.
Kyiv and Moscow have both come under regular drone attack since Putin launched his invasion in February 2022.
The Russian overnight attack also targeted port area infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region and damaged buildings, Governor Oleh Kiper said on Wednesday.
