The Ukrainian military says it has attacked a large oil terminal off the coast of occupied Crimea, the latest in a series of attacks targeting Russian-controlled energy facilities.
Kiev officials said the country’s missile forces launched an attack overnight on the Feodosia terminal, the peninsula’s largest oil processing facility.
Russian officials in Crimea have not confirmed the attack, but have confirmed that a fire broke out at the facility. No casualties were reported from the explosion.
A city-level state of emergency has been declared and 300 people have been evacuated from Feodosia due to the fire, state news agency TASS said.
Footage circulating on social media appears to show smoke rising above the Feodosia terminal. Russian-installed local officials told RIA Novosti that firefighting efforts were continuing.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s Ministry of Defense announced that 12 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the peninsula overnight, out of a total of 21 launched by Kiev.
In a statement announcing the attack, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said oil products transported from the terminal were being used to “meet the needs of the Russian occupation forces.” Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014.
The facility had previously been attacked by a Ukrainian drone strike in March.
Kiev said the attacks on Russian energy facilities were legitimate retaliation by Moscow against its energy infrastructure, which frequently plunges millions into darkness.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in June that at least 80% of Ukraine’s thermal power generation and a third of its hydropower had been destroyed in Russian attacks.
The explosions in Crimea came as Kiev officials said their air force shot down 32 drones and two missiles that Russia launched into the Ukrainian capital overnight.
Air Force officials said a Kinzhal missile missed air defenses and landed near the Starokostianchyv airfield in the Khmelnytsky region.
Starokostianiv has been under constant Russian artillery fire throughout the summer, and the Russian government claims the base is home to F-16 fighter jets donated by Western countries. .
Approximately 65 F-16s have been delivered by NATO countries since US President Joe Biden first authorized a willing European ally to send F-16s to Ukraine in August 2023.
The first batch of jets arrived earlier this summer, and a new transport plane is said to have arrived from the Netherlands on Monday.
Elsewhere, authorities said 17 people were injured in a Russian airstrike in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Regional Director Oleksandr Prokudin said four bombs were dropped on the city and that a 2-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl were among the injured.
