Ukrainian drone strikes kill one, spark fire at oil facility in Russia

A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in Russia’s southwestern Oryol region, local officials said Sunday, while a separate strike hit an oil facility as part of Kyiv’s campaign of strikes on military and energy targets deep inside Russia.

Oryol regional Gov. Andrei Klychkov said Sunday that one person died and nine were wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a residential building overnight in the regional capital, also called Oryol.

Local authorities in Russia’s Yaroslavl region, around 700 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, said fuel storage facilities caught fire after being hit by a drone.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s forces had “struck an oil facility that was important for the reserve of the aggressor state” in the Yaroslavl region.

Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russia’s oil and gas facilities in recent months, arguing the energy sector funds and directly fuels Moscow’s more than four-year invasion.

Meanwhile, Britain is investigating a sanctioned tanker that is suspected of being part of the Russian “shadow fleet,” shipping oil in violation of international sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday. British armed forces boarded and detained the vessel, the Smyrtos, on Sunday in the English Channel, in what the country’s Defence Ministry called “the first UK-led operation of its kind.” Russia is believed to be using a fleet of hundreds of ships to evade sanctions over its war against Ukraine. “This operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fuelling Putin’s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide,” Starmer said.