May 31 (Reuters) – Ukrainian drones struck targets across several Russian regions overnight, including an oil pipeline pumping station, a refinery and a fuel depot, Russian and Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday, in an escalating campaign of strikes against Russian energy infrastructure.
Ukraine’s General Staff said it had struck the Saratov oil refinery on the Volga river, causing a large fire. Saratov regional governor Roman Busargin said on Telegram that “civil infrastructure” had been damaged in the strike, but gave no more details.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had downed 216 drones overnight.
MAJOR FIRE BURNING AFTER DRONE HITS FUEL DEPOT
Kyiv said it had also struck Lazarevo pumping station in the Kirov region, northeast of Moscow and around 1,300 km (800 miles) from Ukrainian-held territory, which serves the Surgut-Gorky-Polotsk pipeline, shipping Russian oil from Siberia to Belarus.
Kirov regional governor Alexander Sokolov said drones had hit a facility in the region, but gave no further information.
In the Rostov region, which borders Ukraine’s Donbas, the focus of fighting in the more than four-year-old war, authorities in the town of Matveyev Kurgan said a major fire was burning after drones hit a fuel depot in the town, which adjoins the Russian-held part of Donetsk region. Ukraine confirmed the strike.
Governors in the Voronezh and Belgorod regions, both of which border Ukraine, also reported damage, with three civilians injured in Belgorod.
On the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula, Moscow-backed governor Sergei Aksyonov said authorities were introducing restrictions on sales of petrol.
He did not say why, but Ukraine has for months been attacking fuel infrastructure in southwestern Russia, close to Crimea.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 229 drones overnight, 212 of which were downed over northern and eastern Ukraine.
(Reporting by Felix Light and Max Hunder; Editing by Kevin Liffey and David Holmes)
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