Fire erupted at Rosneft PJSC’s largest oil refinery after a drone strike, as Ukraine unleashed fresh attacks on Russia that President Vladimir Putin claimed were part of attempts to disrupt this week’s presidential election.
“The Ryazan refinery was hit by a drone. The impact started a fire,” Ryazan regional Governor Pavel Malkov said Wednesday on his Telegram channel. Two people were hospitalized, the Tass news service reported.
Since the start of this year, Ukraine has used drones to target important Russian oil-processing plants from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. As fighting on the front lines swings in Moscow’s favor, Kyiv has been trying to hamper the country’s oil-product exports and its ability to send fuel to its forces. The initial flurry of attacks in February affected almost a fifth of the country’s crude-processing capacity, but by early March the industry was already recovering.
The latest strike was on a facility about 200 kilometers (124 miles) southeast of Moscow that has a capacity of 17.1 million tons a year, or around 340,000 barrels a day. It is a major supplier of motor fuels for Russian regions around the capital. It’s the second casualty of Ukrainian strikes that have damaged facilities accounting for more than 10% of Russia’s oil-processing capacity in the past two days.
Russian Oil Refineries Hit by Drones This Week
The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted 58 drones overnight in the Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, Ryazan and Leningrad regions. That’s among the largest assaults in recent months.
Ukraine’s attacks on Russian regions “are aimed at, if not frustrating the elections in Russia, then interfering with them,” Putin said in an interview with RIA Novosti published Wednesday. “Another goal is to get some kind of trump card in a possible negotiation process.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it was “totally fair” to inflict losses on the Russian state in retaliation for missile and drone attacks that are killing and injuring civilians in his country.
“I think everyone sees that our drones work and they work at long distance,” Zelenskiy said in an address late Tuesday. “Our ability for long-distance strikes is the real way to move towards security for everyone.”
The latest wave of strikes that started Tuesday damaged a unit of Lukoil PJSC’s Norsi refinery in Nizhny Novgorod and hit an oil depot in the Oryol region. Ukrainian drones also repeatedly targeted Surgutneftegas PJSC’s major export-focused Kinef refinery in Kirishi, on the Baltic coast, according to Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko.
A drone targeting the Kinef refinery early Wednesday was downed, Drozdenko said.
The governor of Russia’s southern Voronezh region, Aleksandr Gusev, said 30 drones were destroyed. Some infrastructure and residential properties sustained “minor damage,” he said.
The attacks are taking place as Russia prepares for the March 15-17 presidential election that’s been tightly controlled by the Kremlin to deliver an overwhelming victory for Putin and another six years in power.
Ukraine has conducted drone attacks targeting Russian infrastructure and industrial facilities, as it seeks to undermine the Kremlin’s war effort and retaliate for waves of missile and drone assaults on its own territory since the February 2022 invasion began.
The strikes aimed at oil facilities also aim to disrupt Russia’s exports and fuel supplies to the Russian army on the front lines.
In his interview with state-run RIA, Putin said Russia would demand security guarantees to consider talks to end the war in Ukraine and reiterated that “realities on the ground” should be the basis of any negotiations.
“We are primarily interested in the security of Russia,” Putin said. “We will proceed from that.”
Asked if a “fair deal” with the West is possible, Putin replied: “I don’t trust anyone, but we need assurances.”
Ukraine’s government has previously rejected any deal involving territorial concessions that would reward Putin’s aggression. Putin has declared four annexed regions of eastern and southern Ukraine to be “forever” part of Russia, even as his forces don’t fully control them.
Russian troops have made recent advances as the government in Kyiv struggles to keep its military supplied with munitions following delays in aid from its US and European allies. Zelenskiy claimed this week that his forces have halted Russia’s offensive and were stabilizing the front line.
Putin said the thought of using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine had never crossed his mind and there’s never been a need for them. He didn’t think Russia and the US were heading toward a nuclear conflict.
Still, he said countries that declared they had no red lines toward Russia should understand that Russia would respond in the same way.
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