Moscow—A night-time Ukrainian drone attack set ablaze a Russian oil depot in the Kursk region near the frontier between the two countries, Russian authorities said Thursday.
Regional governor Roman Starovoit said on social media that there were no casualties, appealing to the local population to remain “calm”.
“Following a Ukrainian drone attack in the Kursk region, fire has broken out in an oil depot,” Starovoit said on Telegram.
Ukraine has stepped up its drone and missile attacks on Russian territory in recent months, particularly targeting Russia’s energy and military installations.
Ahead of the second anniversary of Russia’s offensive against its neighbor on February 24, both sides have staged daily drone and missile attacks against each other.
Meanwhile, Ukraine was under a nationwide air alert for over two hours on Thursday after the military warned that a group of bombers had taken off from a base in Russia.
The Ukrainian air force reported that several Tu-95MS strategic bombers had left the Olenya airfield in Russia’s far north, prompting the alert to be issued.
But it was lifted hours later, with the air force saying in a post on Telegram that the “missile threat is over”.
Explosions were officially reported in the regions of Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv and Poltava.
Kyiv’s local government said the air alert had been in place for more than two hours, but “anti-aircraft defense destroyed all enemy missiles” aimed at the city.
The governor of the eastern Zaporizhzhia region said one person was injured and “an infrastructure object” was hit.
Ukraine had also reported the takeoff of the strategic bombers, which date back to the Soviet era, earlier this month and in January.
At the end of December, Russia used the planes to carry out a wave of strikes across Ukrainian cities, including the capital, which killed 39 people.
In other developments, Kyiv said a Russian strike on a hospital in the eastern town of Selydove had killed three people.
The victims were a 38-year-old pregnant woman, as well as another women and her nine-year-old son, Ukraine’s general prosecutor said.
A dozen others, including a six-month old baby, were wounded in the strike.
Offering condolences to their loved ones during his evening address, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned “the Russian state will certainly receive a response to this shelling.”
Zelensky also praised the latest achievement at sea, saying “we will clear the Black Sea of Russian terrorist objects step by step”.
Kyiv’s military intelligence unit and its armed forces said they had “destroyed” the Caesar Kunikov in an attack using naval drones.
The strikes inflicted “critical holes on the left side and (the ship) began to sink”, the GUR intelligence agency said.
The hit takes the tally of Russian warships Kyiv claims to have destroyed since the start of the war to 25 — a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which Kyiv said had 74 vessels before the invasion.
AFP was unable to verify those claims.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg hailed the hit as “a great achievement, a great victory for Ukrainians.”
Ukraine published footage of what it said was a sea drone approaching the Russian ship. There is a blast, and a large fire can be seen.
In Moscow, the Kremlin refused to comment on the reports and there was no mention of the ship in the defence ministry’s daily briefing.
Russia typically does not respond to Ukrainian claims of successful operations.
But military bloggers with close links to the Russian armed forces said it was likely the ship had been hit by Ukrainian forces.
“Time after time the Black Sea fleet has turned out to be incompetent and unable to repel attacks from Ukrainian formations,” said the Rybar Telegram channel, one of the largest pro-war Russian accounts.
AFP