Ukrainian Drones Strike Omsk Oil Refinery Deep Inside Russia

Ukrainian drones struck the Omsk Oil Refinery, one of Russia’s largest, about 2,500 kilometers from Ukraine’s border, Ukraine’s General Staff and Omsk Governor Vitaly Khotsenko said Monday.

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces carried out the strike, the General Staff said, describing the plant as Russia’s most powerful refinery with capacity above 21 million tons a year. It said the facility was the last of Russia’s 11 largest gasoline producers to be hit and supplies the Russian military.

The facility was the last of Russia’s 11 largest gasoline producers to be hit. — Ukraine’s General Staff

Khotsenko said air defenses intercepted most of the drones and no one had been killed or injured, according to preliminary reports cited by Xinhua. Emergency crews were working at the site, he said.

The strike hit the plant’s ELOU-AVT-11 primary crude processing unit, which has a design capacity of 8.4 million tons a year, according to preliminary information from the General Staff. It reported a fire at the site and said damage was still being assessed.

In the neighboring Kursk region, Governor Alexander Khinshtein said a drone hit a cooling tower at the under-construction Kursk Nuclear Power Plant-2. He said the unit was not operational and there were no casualties or environmental damage.

This is a developing story. Virginia Times will update as information becomes available.