Ukraine has targeted Russian energy facilities in one of its largest cross-border drone and rocket attacks of the war, disrupting production at a major oil refinery as armed groups also claimed to have launched a large raid across the border from Ukraine.
The chaotic day in Russia, which also included a military air transport crash that killed all 15 people on board, comes at a sensitive moment as Vladimir Putin has sought to project an image of calm and control ahead of presidential elections this weekend.
Ukraine launched dozens of drones at targets in Russia on Tuesday, with one striking an oil refinery in the Russian region of Nizhny Novgorod that produces nearly 6% of Russia’s total refined crude, and another hitting an oil depot with petroleum products in the city of Oryol.
Video posted to social media showed a major blaze at the Lukoil Norsi oil refinery near Nizhny Novgorod and an industry source told Reuters that the main crude distillation unit (AVT-6) at Norsi had been damaged in the attack, disrupting at least half of the facility’s production.
Nizhny Novgorod is nearly 1,000km (620 miles) from the Ukrainian border and lies about 400km (250 miles) to the east of Moscow. The strike is the latest evidence of Ukraine’s growing ability to target critical infrastructure deep into Russian soil.
“The special services are working at the site, using all the necessary force and means to localise the fire at one of the oil refining installations,” said the Nizhny Novgorod governor, Gleb Nikitin, on the Telegram messaging app.
Kyiv has concentrated fire on Russian refineries and energy facilities in recent months, and Russia has been forced to ban the export of petrol for six months in order to control domestic prices while shortages have been exacerbated by outages at major refineries.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that Ukraine had launched at least 25 drones and seven missiles at targets near Moscow, St Petersburg, Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk, Tula and Oryol. It was not clear how many had been shot down.
The attacks came on the same day as three pro-Ukrainian battalions made up of recruits from Russia launched an incursion in the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions in a rare raid meant to bring the two-year-old war to Russian soil, if only for a short time.
Members of the Siberia, Freedom of Russia Legion and RDK battalions released video footage that they said showed a ground assault supported by at least one tank and other armoured vehicles. In the videos, shot on bodycams and also from drones flying overhead, the troops overran Russian border checkpoints and released footage of pitched fighting in local settlements.
The Freedom of Russia Legion claimed to have captured the town of Tetkino in the Kursk region, and the pro-Ukrainian forces also released footage of soldiers they claimed were captive Russians.
Roman Starovoyt, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, confirmed that pro-Ukrainian forces had approached Tetkino and that the town was being shelled.
“There was an attempt by a sabotage and reconnaissance group to break through. There was a shooting battle, but there was no breakthrough,” he said in a video message on Telegram.
The Russian ministry of defence also claimed that the attack had been repelled, although it did not provide evidence for the claim.
Some of the volunteers from the Siberia battalion called on Russians to reject the elections and rise up against the government. Members of the unit posted pictures of ballots that called for the region to secede from Russia.
“Guys!” said one member of the Siberian battalion in a video posted online from the raid. “Don’t fucking vote with a ballot, let’s vote with a bullet.”
Ukraine has denied that it has any connection to the groups, although they are based on Ukrainian territory and appear to have ties to Ukrainian military intelligence. Ukrainian allies including the US have said they do not provide military aid that would allow Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory.
The last major raid by the volunteer groups on to Russian soil took place last May.
The fighting came hours after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that the situation along the front of Ukraine’s war with Russia was the best it had been in three months, with Moscow’s troops no longer advancing after their capture last month of the eastern city of Avdiivka.
“We have worked in very efficient fashion … against Russian aviation. We have recovered in our situation in the east. The advance of Russian troops has been stopped,” he said in an interview with France’s BFM television.
A Russian Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane also crashed on Tuesday, killing all 15 people aboard. The crash took place in the Ivanovo region, killing the eight crew and seven passengers on board, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said. It claimed the cause of the crash was an engine fire.
