Hours before the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, Ukraine said it had struck an oil refinery in Russia and a Caspian port that Moscow uses to ship weapons from Iran for the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine said it attacked overnight the Syzran refinery, owned by oil giant Rosneft and located in Russia’s Samara region, about 500 miles from the Ukrainian border with Russia.
“The target was hit, with fire and explosions recorded,” after the strike in the early hours on Friday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military said.
The refinery, one of the largest in Rosneft’s network, produces a wide range of fuels and supplies fuel to the Russian army, the Ukrainian army said.
The attack on the Syzran refinery was at least the fifth such Ukrainian strike on Russian energy infrastructure in the past week.
Separately, Ukraine said its Special Operations Forces hit the Olya port in the Russian region of Astrakhan, which is regularly used for shipments of drone parts and military equipment and weapons from Iran to Russia.
The cargo ship Port Olya 4, which was carrying drone parts and ammunition from Iran, was hit, Ukraine’s military said.
Several refineries in Russia sustained damages during Ukrainian drone strikes earlier this month.
A Sunday drone attack on the Saratov refinery, owned by Rosneft, prompted the facility to halt the intake of crude oil, a source with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Monday.
The Saratov Refinery in the Volga region has the capacity to process 140,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, but it has now been forced offline due to Ukrainian drone strikes.
The halt to major refineries would mean that Russia will see lower domestic gasoline and diesel supply while it will have more crude available for export as it doesn’t have too much storage for the unprocessed crude.
Last week, reports emerged that Russia is preparing to sharply increase crude oil exports this month after Ukrainian drone strikes disabled major refineries, prompting a shift toward western port shipments.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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