Ukraine Claims Deep Refinery Strike
Ukraine’s armed forces claims it has struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries more than 1,500 kilometres from the front line overnight, while President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of using North Korean ballistic missiles in deadly attacks that killed at least nine people across Ukrainian cities.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces reported that units carried out a deep strike against the Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery in the city of Orsk in Russia’s Orenburg region. Describing the facility as an important enterprise in Russia’s fuel and energy sector with an annual processing capacity of around six million tonnes of crude, the statement noted that a fire had broken out and that the full extent of the damage was still being assessed.
The refinery produces a range of petroleum products including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and fuel oil, and supplies both domestic markets in the Urals and Volga regions and export destinations. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly framed such long-range attacks on energy infrastructure as an effort to constrain the oil revenues that help finance Russia’s war effort.
The claimed strike came amid a night of intense Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory. Zelensky said Russian forces had used North Korean ballistic missiles, Zircon hypersonic missiles and guided aerial bombs in strikes on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia that killed six people and injured 19. He described the assault as a vicious attack calculated to inflict maximum damage on civilian infrastructure, with apartment buildings and other sites hit.
Additional casualties were reported in the Dnipropetrovsk region, bringing the overnight death toll in Ukraine to at least nine, while explosions were also heard in Kyiv, where one person was wounded and an infectious diseases hospital sustained damage. Sirens sounded across the capital shortly after midnight. Further strikes affected substations in Kherson and Kharkiv, causing power outages, as well as locations in Donetsk and Mykolaiv regions. Zelensky noted that more than 120 drones, many of them jet-powered Shaheds, had also been used.
In a related development, a drone attack caused fires at a Wildberries logistics site in Russia’s Voronezh region. The major online retailer, sometimes described as Russia’s Amazon, has been targeted repeatedly in recent weeks.
Zelensky used the overnight events to renew warnings about deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea. He said it was the first time Russia had been unable to wage the war without North Korean support and cautioned that the partnership posed a growing threat not only to Ukraine but also to North Korea’s neighbours such as Japan and South Korea. He has previously claimed that as many as 50,000 North Korean soldiers are being prepared to join the defence of Russian territory.
Every step Russia takes – expanding ballistic missile production, incorporating North Korean equipment and preparing for further mobilisation, demonstrates that Moscow is preparing for escalation rather than peace, he argued, calling for stronger sanctions on companies supporting the Russian war effort and additional air-defence assistance for Ukraine.
