Russian authorities say Ukraine drone strike responsible for oil refinery fire; governor of Belgorod accuses Kyiv of shelling region
- What we know on day 462 of the invasion
A day after Russia accused Ukraine of sending drones to attack buildings in Moscow, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region said a drone was the likely cause of a fire that broke out at the Afipsky oil refinery.
The fire was soon extinguished and there were no casualties, governor Veniamin Kondratyev said. The Afipsky refinery is not far from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, near another refinery that has been attacked several times this month.
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, accused Ukraine of seeking to “frighten” Russians after Moscow was targeted with a large-scale drone attack for the first time in the 15-month war. He said that Ukraine had chosen the path of attempting “to intimidate Russia, Russian citizens [with] attacks on residential buildings” and added that the drone attacks were “clearly a sign of terrorist activity.”
Ukrainian presidential aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, denied Ukraine was involved. However, he did he predict “an increase in the number of attacks”.
One of the drones used in Tuesday morning’s raid on Moscow appears to have been a Ukrainian manufactured UJ 22 drone produced by the Ukrjet company. Alleged footage of the drone, captured in flight during the attack, appears to match released images of the unmanned aerial vehicle which Russia has claimed has been used in other attempted attacks.
James Cleverly, the UK’s foreign secretary, told reporters that Ukraine has the “legitimate right” to defend itself and can “project force” beyond its borders. At a news conference in Estonia on Tuesday, Cleverly said: “[Ukraine] has the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself.”
The Russian defence ministry said eight drones targeted the city overnight but Russian media close to the security services wrote that the number was many times higher, with more than 30 drones participating in the attack.
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, faced its third air raid in 24 hours on Tuesday morning. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, confirmed that 20 residents were evacuated from a damaged building. One person died and four were injured in the strike.
Restrictions on grain imports from Ukraine into the EU would need to be extended, the bloc’s agricultural minister said on Tuesday, despite opposition from Kyiv. The restrictions were implemented after complaints from eastern EU countries that a surplus of Ukrainian grain was driving down local prices and affecting local farmers.
Ukraine wants to begin work to make its Danube shipping canal deeper as early as this year, to expand its alternative routes to export grain, deputy minister of renovation and infrastructure, Yuriy Vaskov, said on Tuesday. The push for alternative export routes has taken on urgency during the war, after Russia blocked Ukraine’s traditional export routes via the Black Sea.
Sweden’s accession into Nato is “within reach”, secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday. Sweden formally applied to join Nato last year, but was blocked by Turkey over claims that Kurdish militants had settled in the country. Stoltenberg said it was “possible to reach a solution and enable the decision on full membership for Sweden by “ the Nato summit in July.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine committed to respect the five principles laid out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to try to safeguard Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The principles included that there should be no attacks on, or from the plant and that no heavy weapons should be housed there.
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