Russia launched an overnight air attack on Ukraine’s key Danube grain port of Izmail, damaging infrastructure and triggering fires as Kyiv intensified its own strikes on Russian oil and energy facilities.
Ukrainian authorities said Thursday that the attack on Izmail, located near the Romanian border in the southern Odesa region, damaged port infrastructure and caused power outages in parts of the city. Izmail is a major hub for Ukrainian grain and commodity exports.
The Russian attack came a day after Ukraine targeted Novorossiysk, an important grain-shipping hub on Russia’s Black Sea coast.
In a separate incident in the Odesa region, a Russian drone struck a passenger train, killing the driver and his assistant, according to Ukrainian Railways chief Oleksandr Pertsovskyi.
As Russian attacks continue, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has renewed calls for additional U.S. Patriot interceptor missiles. Zelensky told CNN that Ukraine needs at least five per cent of the current U.S. stockpile of Patriot interceptors to counter an increase in Russian ballistic missile attacks.
Kyiv is particularly seeking additional PAC-3 interceptors, which are designed to counter ballistic missiles.
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck an oil refinery and petrochemical complex in Russia’s Bashkortostan region, approximately 1,300 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. The attack reportedly caused a fire at the facility, which Kyiv says supplies fuel to Russian forces.
Separately, an oil refinery in the Russian city of Orsk has halted operations following a Ukrainian drone attack and could remain offline for as long as six months, according to Orenburg regional Governor Yevgeny Solntsev.
Solntsev said critical infrastructure at the refinery was damaged and warned that sanctions could make repairs more difficult because the facility depends on imported equipment.
The Orsk refinery, located near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, has an annual crude-processing capacity of approximately six million tonnes and produces gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products.
Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russian refineries and other energy infrastructure in an effort to disrupt fuel supplies and raise the economic costs of the war.
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine carried out another exchange involving the remains of soldiers killed in the war.
Russia transferred the remains of 261 Ukrainian soldiers to Kyiv and received the remains of 24 Russian personnel, according to Russia’s RBC news outlet, which cited a senior lawmaker.
Similar exchanges have taken place periodically between the two countries since the war began.
