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Ukraine increases attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure in bid to disrupt financing of its war.
The Ukrainian military reports that it has struck a Russian warship and a drilling rig in the Black Sea.
Kyiv’s drone forces commander, Robert Brovdi, said on Monday that the overnight attack targeted the Admiral Makarov missile carrier in the port of Novorossiysk, which is Russia’s largest oil exporting outlet on the Black Sea. Ukraine has increased its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in a bid to disrupt export revenues that feed into Moscow’s war chest.
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Russian authorities said at least eight people, including two children, were injured in Novorossiysk, without specifying whether the port was struck.
Videos posted on Telegram and verified by Al Jazeera’s verification unit showed a fire at one of the oil port’s docks in the city.
Novorossiysk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko said debris from drones had fallen on two locations in the city, including a residential area.
Russia’s military said in the early morning that air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period. It added that officials said emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half a million households in outages linked to air attacks.
Ukraine has concentrated drone attacks around the port of Novorossiysk throughout the war but has ramped up its efforts to halt Russian energy exports recently [File: Reuters]A Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal is located in the Novorossiysk port area. It exports oil from Kazakhstan, and its shareholders include major US oil companies, such as Chevron and ExxonMobil.
Ukraine has significantly intensified its attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, including the largest oil exporting hubs on both the Baltic and Black seas, as it seeks to reduce Moscow’s revenues from the sales of oil, the lifeblood of its economy.
The Kremlin has tried to boost its exports after United States President Donald Trump gave it a temporary waiver from sanctions to ease supply constraints as the US-Israeli war on Iran upends oil markets following a de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Kyiv officials complained that Russia will use the additional revenue to buy new weapons to hit Ukraine harder.
Later on Monday, Russia reported that Ukrainian drones had attacked the CPC terminal. The export facility, which handles 1.5 percent of global oil supplies, reported damage to mooring, loading and storage infrastructure, the Reuters news agency reported.
“The Kyiv regime deliberately attacked facilities of the international oil transportation company Caspian Pipeline Consortium in order to inflict maximum economic damage on its largest shareholders – energy companies from the United States and Kazakhstan,” the Russian Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
The Black Sea strikes come a day after Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, one of Russia’s main oil exporting outlets, and the NORSI oil refinery in the western region of Nizhny Novgorod.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of northwestern Russia’s Leningrad region, said a fuel reservoir in the Primorsk port area leaked when it was hit by shrapnel.
Ukrainian drones also repeatedly struck Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga last month, damaging several buildings in the sprawling complex of oil-processing facilities and export terminals.
Odesa has been targeted numerous times by Russian strikes (EPA)In Ukraine, an overnight Russian drone attack on the southern port city of Odesa on Monday killed two women and a toddler, authorities said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that 16 people were wounded, including a pregnant woman and two children.
Russian strikes also hit energy infrastructure in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, Zelenskyy said.
More than 300,000 households were without electricity in the Chernihiv region in the north after distribution facilities were damaged in attacks, according to the regional power utility.
Zelenskyy said that over the past week, Russia launched at Ukraine more than 2,800 attack drones, nearly 1,350 glide bombs and more than 40 missiles.
