Russia says Ukraine is attacking Russia with 60 drones, oil refinery has been shut down

MOSCOW: Ukraine has fired nine US ATACMS into Crimea and attacked Russian regions with at least 60 drones. It was a major attack that forced an oil refinery in southern Russia to halt operations, Russian officials said on Sunday.

Russian air defense shot down nine ATACMS missiles over Crimea, as well as 57 drones over Russia’s Krasnodar region and three drones over the Belgorod region, the Defense Ministry said.

Local officials said six drones crashed on the site of an oil refinery in Slavyansk in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. The Interfax news agency said the refinery stopped work after the attack.

TASS quoted a refinery official as saying the loads from the drones launched by Ukraine were larger than in previous attacks and included steel balls.

The Slavyansk refinery is a private facility with a capacity of 4 million tons of oil per year, about 1 million bpd.

There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.

Russia has reported an increase in Ukrainian attacks on its territory since its forces opened a new front in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region earlier this month.

President Vladimir Putin says Russia is building a buffer zone there to protect Russia from such attacks, which Russia says could trigger a larger war between Russia and the West if Ukraine uses Western weapons.

Putin said on Friday that Russia currently has no plans to take Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

The White House said Friday that U.S. policy of not encouraging Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons against Russian territory has not changed.

“We neither encourage nor enable attacks with U.S.-supplied weapons systems on Russian territory. That’s the policy,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “That hasn’t changed.”

That remark came after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Kiev on Wednesday that the United States does not encourage Ukraine to attack targets inside Russia with U.S.-supplied weapons, but believes it is a decision that Kiev itself should meet.

Crimea
Russia said on Saturday its troops captured the village of Starytsia in the Kharkiv region and defeated Ukrainian units at the front, including in the Sumy region.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and now considers the territories – which make up about 18% of Ukraine – along with parts of four other regions controlled by its forces to be part of Russia. This stance was rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would not rest until all Russian troops were withdrawn from Ukraine.

Zelensky said in an interview with Agence France-Presse that he expected Russia to step up its offensive in the northeast and warned that Kiev had only a quarter of the air defense it needed to defend Ukraine.

AFP also quoted him as saying that while the West does not want Ukraine to lose the war, it is afraid of what defeat could mean for Russia.