July 6 (Reuters) – Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Omsk refinery, the country’s largest and located deep in Siberia, in what would be one of the longest-ranged Ukrainian strikes since the beginning of the war, Kyiv’s military said on Monday, with local Russian authorities also confirming a strike.
In a statement, Ukraine’s General Staff said that the strike had caused a fire at the Omsk refinery, which is located around 2,700 km (1,700 miles) from Ukrainian-held territory and close to Russia’s border with Kazakhstan.
In a post on Telegram, Omsk region governor Vitaly Khotsenko did not specify a target, but said that several Ukrainian drones had reached “Omsk’s northern industrial hub”, where the refinery is located.
He said that the full impact of the attack was being assessed and emergency services were dealing with the aftermath.
Sources told Reuters that the Gazpromneft-ownedOmsk refinery processed around 23 million metric tons, or 460,000 barrels, of oil daily last year.
Ukraine has been escalating a campaign of strikes against Russian oil refineries, causing acute fuel shortages across the country’s 11 time zones.
Aside from Omsk, Ukraine’s military overnight hit Russia’s Ust-Luga and Vysotsk ports, which handle oil exports on the Baltic Sea, as well as targets in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions, local governors said.
In Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, one woman was killed in a strike on the port of Kerch, Russian-installed authorities said. Sevastopol, the peninsula’s largest city, suffered a blackout, they said.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Felix Light; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
