A refinery near Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s sixth most populous city, and a fuel depot in the Oryol region burst into flames on Tuesday morning after being hit by two Ukrainian combat drones. They are the most important effects of the extensive attack with drones and rockets carried out by the Kyiv Army against targets within Russian territory.
The governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Gleb Nikitin, reported on his Telegram channel that the Ukrainian attack reached the industrial zone of Kstov, near the capital of that Volga region. “The special services, all forces and means are involved to locate the fire in one of the oil processing plants. According to the first data, there are no injuries,” said the senior official.
Nikitin specified that the damage occurred to a crude oil refining unit, which was on fire. The governor published a photo of the NORSI refinery, belonging to the Russian oil company Lukoil. This refinery can process 17 million tons of oil per year, or 340,000 barrels of oil per day, according to the Reuters agency. That means it produces 11% of Russia’s gasoline.
Hours earlier, a drone crashed into fuel facilities at another Russian refinery, in this case in the Oryol region, halfway between Moscow and the border with Ukraine. As a result, one of the oil storage tanks caught fire.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have shot down 25 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions, including Moscow Province, Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk, Tula, Oryol and Leningrad, the province surrounding Saint Petersburg and which has retained the Soviet name.
According to this department, Ukrainian forces also launched nine missiles, eight RM-70 rockets and one Tochka-U missile against the Belgorod region. This artillery could be part of an attempt by armed groups to cross into Russian territory.
Three militias of Russian anti-Putin fighters installed in Ukraine claimed on their social networks to have advanced with the intention of reaching Russian territory. According to the former Russian deputy, now exiled in Ukraine, Iliá Ponomariov, these forces managed to penetrate and occupy a small village. Russia, for its part, claims that they did not succeed, that the combatants were rejected and lost a hundred men.
“The Freedom for Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian battalion have entered the Kursk and Belgorod regions of the Russian Federation as part of a joint operation,” Ponomariov, who is considered the leader, wrote on his Facebook account. political head of the Freedom Legion for Russia.
He added that the town of “Lozovaya Rudka, in the Belgorod region, is under the complete control of the liberation forces.” The Russian region of Belgorod borders the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.
The raid was also confirmed by the Freedom for Russia Legion on its Telegram channel. “Like all our fellow citizens, in the Legion we dream of a Russia free from Putin’s dictatorship. But we don’t just dream: we make every effort to make those dreams come true,” the channel reads.
Since the beginning of the conflict, these militias have carried out several incursions into Russian territory. The most important took place in May of last year, when they took control of some towns in the Russian region of Belgorod for several hours.
The town where, according to them, they arrived this Tuesday, Lozovaya Rudka, is considered a rural village and according to the 2010 Russian census its population amounts to 45 inhabitants.
Despite the relative importance of having reached this place, Moscow flatly rejected that enemy troops had reached its territory. The Russian Security Services (FSB) denied it, according to information from the Ría Nóvosti agency.
Another state agency, Tass, claimed that the FSB forces, which are responsible for border surveillance, had killed a hundred people and destroyed numerous armored vehicles when they tried to penetrate Russia.
According to Moscow, this attack was carried out by saboteurs from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and makes no reference to Russian anti-Putin militias.
According to Ponomariov, there was also fighting between them and the Russian forces in Tiotkino, in the Russian region of Kursk, which is north of Belgorod and borders the Ukrainian province of Sumi.
While these attacks were taking place, a Russian Iliusin Il-76 military transport plane crashed in the Ivanovo region, less than 300 kilometers from Moscow, with fifteen people on board, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.
The reason for the catastrophe, which occurred shortly before 1:00 p.m. (11 a.m. in Barcelona), was the fire in one of the plane’s engines, a fact that can be clearly seen in several videos published on social networks by witnesses to the accident.
The Ministry considers the 15 occupants, eight crew members and seven passengers, dead. They had taken off from the Séverni airfield and were preparing to carry out a training flight.
