Russian officials say that an early Friday morning attack by Ukrainian drones on Crimea cut power to the city of Sevastopol and set fire to a refinery in southern Russia.
During Moscow’s offensive in northeastern Ukraine, the drone raids were Kyiv’s attempt to strike back. This has put more pressure on the Ukrainian forces, who are already outnumbered and outgunned and are waiting for Western partners to deliver important weapons and ammunition.
Ukraine hasn’t said anything about the attack or taken credit for it.
Moscow’s Defense Ministry said that air defenses shot down 51 Ukrainian drones over Crimea, 44 over Krasnodar, and 6 over Belgorod. It said that six sea drones were shot down in the Black Sea by Russian warplanes and patrol boats.
Governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said that the drone attack hurt the city’s power plant. Sevastopol is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet’s main base. He said that fully restoring power might take a day and warned people that parts of the city would lose power.
In a statement, he said, “Communal services are doing their best to get the power back on as soon as possible.”
Razvozhayev also said that city schools would be closed for a while.
Maxar Technologies released satellite images that show that earlier Ukrainian attacks at Belbek air base near Sevastopol damaged planes and a building used to store fuel.
Authorities in the Krasnodar region said that an early Friday drone attack started a fire at an oil refinery in Tuapse. The fire was put out in the end. It did not hurt anyone.
Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russian refineries and other energy facilities, doing a lot of damage.
Drones from Ukraine also attacked Novorossiysk, a big port on the Black Sea. Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar region, said that pieces of downed drones started several fires, but no one was hurt.
Golovin Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said that a Ukrainian drone hit a car and killed a mother and her 4-year-old child. He said that in another attack, someone set fire to a fuel tank at a gas station in the area.
At the same time, Ukrainian troops were fighting to stop Russian advances that started late last week in the northeastern part of Kharkiv. The fighting has been bad in the town of Vovchansk lately. It is only 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Russian border. About 8,000 civilians have been evacuated from the town by the Ukrainian government.
Usually, the Russian army attacks towns and villages from the air to destroy them before sending in its troops.
China has been testing its defenses in other places along the front line that runs from north to south through eastern Ukraine and is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) long. In the last 18 months, that line hasn’t changed much as the war has turned into a lose-lose battle.
In the past few weeks, Russia has attacked areas in the east of Donetsk, the north in Chernihiv and Sumy, and the south in Zaporizhzhia. The goal seems to be to take advantage of Ukraine’s weaknesses and use its limited resources in a clever way.
