Ukraine’s military says it has launched an attack on a major oil port off the occupied Crimean Peninsula, the latest in a wave of attacks targeting Russian-controlled energy facilities.
Officials in Kyiv said the country’s missile force launched an attack on the Feodosia terminal – the largest oil processing facility on the peninsula – in an overnight attack.
Russian-appointed officials in Crimea have not confirmed the attack but admitted there was a fire at the facility. No casualties from the explosion were reported.
A municipal state of emergency was declared, with 300 people evacuated from Feodosia due to the blaze, the state-run Tass news agency reported.
Footage circulating on social networks shows smoke rising above the Feodosia station. Local officials appointed by Russia told RIA Novosti that efforts to extinguish the fire were ongoing.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s Ministry of Defense said 12 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the peninsula overnight out of a total of 21 launched by Kyiv.
In a statement announcing the attack, the Ukrainian General Staff said oil products shipped from the terminal were being used to “meet the needs of the Russian occupation troops.” Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014.
The facility was previously hit in a Ukrainian drone strike in March.
Kyiv says attacks on Russian energy facilities are fair retaliation for Moscow’s attacks on its own energy infrastructure, which regularly leave millions in darkness .
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in June that at least 80% of Ukraine’s thermal power and a third of its hydropower output were destroyed in Russian attacks.
The explosion in Crimea came as officials in Kyiv said the air force shot down 32 drones and two missiles launched by Russia at the Ukrainian capital overnight.
Air force officials said a Kinzhal missile evaded air defense systems and hit the area around Starokostiantyniv airport in the Khmelnytskyi region.
Starokostiantyniv came under constant Russian fire throughout the summer, when Moscow claimed to have a base housing Western-funded F-16 fighter jets.
Some 65 F-16s have been pledged by NATO countries since US President Joe Biden first authorized European allies to send them to Ukraine in August 2023.
The first batch of jets arrived earlier this summer, with new shipments believed to have arrived from the Netherlands on Monday.
Elsewhere, in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, officials said 17 people were injured in a Russian airstrike. Regional head Oleksandr Prokudin said a two-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl were among those injured when four bombs were dropped on the city.
